


Gravity

by nothinbuttherain



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Harry Potter AU, Modern AU, Person of Interest AU, Slow Burn, Soulmate AU, The Hunger Games AU, UST, marvel AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 06:58:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5995948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothinbuttherain/pseuds/nothinbuttherain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soulmate cross-universe AU: A series of connected snapshots providing a look into the different universes and lives in which Marcus and Abby find each other. Chronological across each part, mirrors their canon timeline, beginning with young!kabby through the lens of a Harry Potter AU; Jake's death in a Modern, cop AU; the period of tension, friction and discord following Jake's death and taking us into season one in a Hunger Games AU; softening and beginning to find themselves and each other evolving further through first a Marvel/Superhero AU and a Person of Interest AU and finally culminating in bringing them full circle to where we find them in canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kings and Queens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noblydonedonnanoble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Young!Kabby: Harry Potter AU: Marcus and Abby as teenagers at the wizarding school of Hogwarts, their first meeting and blossoming of their friendship.

Part 1: Of Kings and Queens  

The faint sound of his quill scratching over the parchment in front of him is all that disturbs the quiet peace of the library. It’s late on Sunday night and most students have long since abandoned their studies for the comfortable leisure of their common rooms. Marcus has always found it easier to work and think and generally function later at night however which is why he’s sitting alone finishing a potions essay at the back of nine.

The relative calm and quiet also helps; at this hour he has the place to himself, another benefit of his practically nocturnal habits. Books, questions and answers, complex spell theories and number charts are all infinitely easier to grasp than most of the people in the castle and so Marcus does his best to avoid them whenever and wherever possible. He likes the silence that descends over him like warm breath, soothing and stabilising, reassuring in its own way.

As he leans forwards to consult the book he has propped open before him though, making sure he’s noted down the correct volume of salamander blood, he hears someone shift in the row of books behind him, tutting and cursing under their breath.

The voice is one he feels he recognises though he can’t put a name or even a face to it but he stamps on his curiosity and hastily ducks his head to concentrate on his work. This becomes increasingly difficult as the person searching the shelves moves around to stand right at his back, pacing up and down and making ever more frustrated noises of impatience at their evidently fruitless search.

The girl, he thinks she’s a girl from her perfume, every time she drifts past the light, fragrant scent picks at his attention, drawing it away from his books and to her instead and that makes him flush slightly. He hopes she won’t notice. But then, why would she? he reasons fairly, she’s here for books, she has no interest in him.

This comforting thought is proved to be entirely devoid of any comfort whatsoever a second later however when the girl with no interest in him approaches him directly and asks him a question, “Is that _Common Potions Ingredients and Their Uncommon Uses?”_ she wants to know, lightly tapping the page of the book he’s using to finish his essay.

The girl before him, now that he comes to see her, is one that he’s seen about the school throughout the years though he’s never spoken to her before now. She’s petite, his year, he thinks, but the fine green border edging her robes marks her as a Slytherin, not in his house. Her long hair is bound in a braid running down her back and her large, liquid brown eyes have a fierce intensity to them tempered somewhat by a gentle warmth.  

“What?” he mumbles blankly, speaking before he’s quiet managed to get his head around her words to make sense of them and enable him to come up with a smarter answer, having been too busy gazing up at her and trying to remember her name.

A dull red flush seeps into his cheeks as she arches a thin eyebrow at him in puzzlement. Desperate to correct his error, he fumbles and hastily blurts out, “Oh, yes, yes it is.”

To his enormous relief she doesn’t seem hugely put off by how flustered he is, she smiles and gestures at the chair beside him that he’s using to sit his bag on while he works, “Do you mind if I join you and share your book? I was really hoping to get this essay finished tonight, it’s due tomorrow.”

“Yes,” he says too quickly and without thinking. When he catches sight of her slight frown he notices his mistake and hastens to correct it. “I meant no, no I don’t mind.” Deciding to further clarify this point he hastily moves his bag and pulls out the chair to allow her to sit down beside him.

She smiles again and settles into the seat as he struggles to clear a space on the table for her things into which she effortlessly deposits parchment, quills, ink and a stack of her own handwritten notes, seeming not to notice his fumbling, frantic feeling attempts to make room for her.

These notes he can’t help noticing, are precise, coded and carefully structured, carefully with a set order and logic but are damn near illegible, especially compared to his own writing, each character neatly formed and aligned, like rows of small black soldiers drawn up in orderly ranks upon the parchment.

She notices him peering at her messy handwriting and flashes him a fleeting, wolfish smile then she says, “I’m Abby, by the way, Abby Waters, Slytherin.”

He smiles, nods shyly, and blurts, “Marcus, Marcus Kane, Gryffindor.”

They work in companionable silence for the next twenty minutes or so, talking only to ask if it’s alright to turn a page or look something up until she says absently, “You’re adding too much powdered griffin claw to your strengthening solution there,” tapping the most recent line of his essay to indicate his error.

He blinks up at her in surprise and she raises her hands in mock surrender, “I wasn’t trying to cheat,” she insists with an edge of defiance in her tone, “I couldn’t help noticing.”

“I didn’t think you were trying to cheat,” he says quickly, with what he hopes is a reassuring smile, “Thanks,” to punctuate this sentiment he scratches out the offending quantity and enters the right one neatly above it. Wanting to return the favour if he can he glances down at her work but he can barely make out one word in ten and gives up. Seeing her watching him he says, “I’m sure yours is fine.”

She actually laughs at this, her eyes bright when she stops and looks at him again. They work together for the next hour, becoming increasingly comfortable with one another, checking facts out loud with each other as they go until both have a satisfactorily completed essay.

Marcus returns the book to its proper place on the shelf, the two of them pack up their things, carefully rolling up their essays and securing them in their bags, then head for the exit of the library and off into the rest of the castle. They separate at the top of the marble staircase where Abby descends down into the entrance hall and then further still to the dungeons as Marcus continues on to the next flight of stairs, headed for Gryffindor Tower.

When they part Abby smiles and thanks him for his help, “I’ll see you around, Marcus.”

He nods and tries to think of something to say but she turns away and proceeds down the marble staircase, having nearly reached the bottom of it before he manages to blurt out his feeble, “Bye,” she turns back to look at him flushing in exactly the same spot she left him and smiles at him broadly once more before she disappears down a dark corridor.

Giving himself a little shake Marcus proceeds all the way up to the seventh floor and the Fat Lady, who chides him, yet again, for being out of bed so late, before he can give her the password and scramble through into the common room.

“Kane!” Jake’s voice calls, waving him enthusiastically over to a table by the fire, he pads over to join him, “You were gone so long I thought you’d gotten lost,” Jake tells him cheerfully, trying to look up at Marcus as well as keep an eye on the game of exploding snap he’s playing with Thelonious.

Marcus pauses, stopping himself from excusing himself to go to bed long enough to smirk and say, “You’re the one who still gets lost even though you’ve been here for five years,” he reminds him pointedly.

“I can find all the important things,” Jake grins easily.

“Food and the Quidditch pitch,” Marcus lists drily.

“Exactly,” Jake agrees amiably, “I can just follow you everywhere else I need to go,” Marcus rolls his eyes expansively at this but Jake clearly has more important things on his mind, “So, not lost,” he says briskly, “What kept you then? Sneaking off to meet someone a girl in secret in an empty classroom?”

“No!” Marcus splutters hopelessly, his face burning until it’s the same colour as the crimson carpets.

Jake’s eyes nearly fall out of his head as he ogles him in astonishment, “You _were_ meeting a girl,” he says, half amazed, half triumphant at his own stunning powers of discovery.

“No!” Marcus protests, “I just, I just _met_ one, I didn’t mean to meet her,” he tries to explain, badly.

Jake continues to goggle at him as though he’s sprouted an extra head without noticing, “Well?” he demands finally with evident impatience when Marcus doesn’t volunteer any more details on this shocking occurrence, “How did it go?”

“How did what go?” Marcus asks blankly, bemused by the question.

Jake seems to deflate with disappointment at this, “You didn’t ask her out?”

“No!” Marcus yelps, his insides shrivelling up at the very thought, “No, we just, just helped each other finish off that potions essay, that’s all,” before Jake can think of anything else to say on the subject Marcus says quickly, “I’m going to bed, I’ll see you in the morning okay?”

“Okay,” Jake replies with one of his trademark easy smiles, “Night!”

“Night,” Marcus mumbles absently, already halfway to the stairs leading up to their dormitory.

****

Settling himself in his usual seat in the middle row Marcus beings unpacking his books, parchment and ingredients out onto his desk as the rest of the class file in and noisily get set up too. He’s so intent on searching his bag for his essay, becoming increasingly convinced that he’s somehow managed to leave it behind in his dormitory despite not having taken it out of his bag since leaving the library the night before, that he doesn’t realise who’s taken the seat beside him until he recognises the same sweet scent he’d caught in the library which makes him look up.

Abby is calmly setting up beside him, casual as anything, as though they’ve always done this. When she notices him watching her in poorly concealed surprise she smiles and says, “Hi again.”

“Hello,” Marcus manages, wishing he could think of something else to say that’s a little more interesting.

“You seemed nice in the library yesterday,” she says, smoothly filling the silence between them with an ease as alien to him as Mars, “I decided that I wanted to get to know you a little better,” more silence greets these words and she looks, for the first time, a little uncertain and adds, “As long as that’s okay with you?”

“Of course, yes, please,” he blurts out at last and she relaxes once more and continues unpacking.

He casts around hopefully, fruitlessly, willing his brain to come up with something else to say to carry on their conversation but once again she spares him, easily making up for his silence and asks evenly, “What other subjects are you taking this year?”

“Arithmancy, Transfiguration, Charms...” he begins to list but cuts himself off halfway through to say hello to Jake who’s just appeared on his other side.

“Hey!” he says brightly, by way of greeting, then, catching sight of Abby, does a slight double take, “Sorry, did I interrupt?”

“It’s not a problem,” Marcus says, a little snappishly, worrying that Jake is going to start on his ridiculous suggestions of the night before and flashes him a warning look to try and dissuade him.

To his relief when he addresses Abby he makes no mention of dating and doesn’t tease Marcus at all, only her, “What’s a very Slytherin, but very pretty,” he adds hastily, catching and correctly interpreting her slight eyebrow raise, “girl doing at our table, Kane?” he asks, in mock confusion, looking past him to Abby, making it clear he’s really speaking to her, playful approval dancing in his light blue-grey eyes, “Are you lost?”

Marcus flushes slightly but Abby responds with a smirk almost as broad as Jake’s and says, “No. I was just talking to Marcus,” she explains, “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

“Jake Griffin,” he answers promptly and Marcus restrains himself from rolling his eyes with difficulty, recognising the subtle change in Jake’s voice as it becomes slightly deeper and more mature as she eyes him, he also reaches out and shakes her hand, balancing out the formal gesture with a very informal wink that makes her smile again.

“Abby Waters,” she replies, still eyeing him up and down with a rather appraising glint in her eye. Marcus ducks his head pointedly and tries not to look too amused with the situation.

Jake ponders her name for a moment then says, “You made the Slytherin Quidditch team this year didn’t you? I remember seeing your name on the team list,” Jake plays keeper and aspiring captain on the Gryffindor team and concerns himself with little else whenever the game is mentioned.

Abby nods enthusiastically. “Seeker?” Jake asks, not paying attention to what he’s doing being too busy watching her with the eagerness of a puppy about to be presented with dinner, but still managing to thank Marcus for saving his entire bottle of armadillo bile from his careless elbow, Marcus just nods, still keeping his face down a little so they can’t see him grinning at them.

“Chaser,” Abby replies evenly.  

Jake nods but at that point the door opens behind them and their teacher sweeps in, which puts an end to their cheerful discussion and Jake jumps to, rummaging around in his bag for his books and his essay. This reminds Marcus about his own. He rummages frantically for another minute or so before he feels a gentle tap on his arm and looks around to see Abby holding his neatly rolled up essay, which she had used to get his attention in the first place.

“Thanks,” he mutters gratefully, flashing her a quick half-smile, taking it from her and relaxing slightly.

“So,” she says, as the teacher abandons his bag on the desk and begins writing the instructions for the day’s potion on the board, his back to the class, “How are you finding Arithmancy this year? Have you started the essay yet?”

Perking up immediately at the mention of his favourite subject, Marcus turns away from the board and engages her in conversation, feeling much more at ease with a topic he’s familiar with as well as fond of, which he has a sneaking suspicion that she knew.

 They talk in quiet whispers until they’re told brusquely to get to work. He can sense almost immediately from the confidence and instinctive air with which she works that she has a natural gift for potion brewing, her movements are deft and precise, sometimes adding a little more or a little less than the textbook requires for the recipe, using her own judgement more often than her scales or measuring cups. And it’s a gift she doesn’t seem at all reluctant to share by the fact that she spends the lesson giving him quiet pointers and tips to improve his work, explaining everything as she does so to make sure he understands her reasoning.

Afterwards they have lunch and, after Jake hurries off to find the rest of his Quidditch team for an emergency meeting ahead of the weekend’s upcoming match and disappears off, leaving them alone with a cheery smile and a wave. To his surprise, Marcus finds himself asking if she’d like to head out into the grounds for a little while with him. To his even greater surprise she smiles warmly and accepts this proposal at once, falling into step beside him as they walk through the large double doors and out onto the rich, sweeping lawns.

It’s still near the beginning of term and the winter cold snap hasn’t hit them just yet. It’s a clear, fine day and the  sun has even dared to make an appearance, casting a soft, weak light over the expansive grounds. They wander for a time, talking about the subjects they share and their plans for what they want to do after they’ve left school.

Abby has set her sights on becoming a healer, something he’s almost certain she’ll achieve; she has an air of invincibility about her, that gives off the impression that she would be capable of anything she puts her mind to, that her future is limitless for someone with no concept of failure.

When she asks him in turn what he wants to do he shrugs and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his robes and mumbles, “I’m not sure, really. An auror, maybe,” she smiles at that and tells him with a nonchalant confidence that she’s sure he’d be good at that but he still has plenty of time to decide for sure.

After ambling slowly around the lake twice they settle themselves in the shade of a larch beech tree, flopping down onto the soft grass and gazing out at their surroundings. Cautiously, once they’ve been quiet for a few minutes, he opens his bag, “Do you, do you fancy a game of chess?” he asks her tentatively, drawing out a rather battered board and unfolding it to reveal the players inside.

She blinks at him, “I would,” she says slowly, with an air that suggests she’s about to make a hasty excuse for why she can’t, “But I don’t know how to play.”

Taken aback by this he gathers himself quickly and offers eagerly, “I could teach you if you like?”

A sudden smile lights up her face at that, “Okay, sure!” she agrees enthusiastically, swivelling around and shifting her position so that she’s sitting directly opposite him.

He carefully lays the chessboard flat on the grass between them and gives her charge of the white pieces, explaining the starting array as the pieces march purposefully to their allotted places of their own accord; the pawns forming a single solid line in the front line with the king and queen in the middle of the back row flanked by knights, bishops and rooks.

Once all of the pieces are in their correct places he explains the movements of each and the rules that govern them. The little wooden figures hop and shuffle meekly from square to square to illustrate his words for her.

She catches on quickly and is eager to get started so they begin their first game as a practice run with Marcus directing her pieces almost as often as his own and explaining the reasons behind each move so she can start to learn some of the strategy involved.

The longer they play the less he intervenes until one of her bishops begins trying to give her advice of its own, “Don’t send me there!” it squawks indignantly, “Look at his knight, he’ll take me out!” Abby bites her lip and glances questioningly up at Marcus for advice. He smiles quietly and silences the bishop with look.

 “It has a point,” she says grudgingly, rather resenting being told off by a lump of carved wood with an attitude, but indicating the opposing knight in question all the same, “It will get taken if I make that move.” Marcus nods but doesn’t speak, letting her continue slowly, “So I shouldn’t make it?”

He smiles again, “That depends,” he says enigmatically.

“On what?” she says, startled by this, “I want to keep all of my pieces safe, so I shouldn’t put any of them where they’re in danger.”

“Here, here,” intones the snide bishop,

Marcus taps it irritably with his finger to silence it then says, “At the end of the day,” he begins slowly, wondering how best to explain, “The only piece you really can’t afford to ever lose is the king,” he says, indicating it,” You can lose whoever else you have to as long as it ultimately protects him. Chess is strategy based, it’s about the long game, the final goal, the greater good, which in this case is keeping your king safe.”

“So,” she prompts, indicating that she’s understood and wants him to continue.

“So, some sacrifices are worthwhile, even necessary, look,” returning his focus to the board between them he barks at the bishop, “You do as you’re told,” reluctantly, and with much sullen, incoherent grumbling, her bishop obliges and shuffles into position, “Now I use my knight to take it,” he says, encouraging the piece in question forwards to engage with the bishop, which is dragged unceremoniously off the board after a short, very violent tussle, “But now you can use your castle to take my knight,” he prompts, which she does, “That weakens my king and strengthens your own and your attacking position, see?” she nods, smiling and understanding, “That’s a sacrifice that you’ve gained something from then.”

“it seems a little cold though,” she says conversationally as Marcus encourages his queen forwards to squash an opposing pawn.  

“That’s chess,” he shrugs evenly, “Sacrifice is part of the game.”

“Who taught you how to play?” she asks, nudging a very reluctant pawn of her own on, ignoring its disapproving squeals of protest.

“My mother,” he says with a soft smile, “She only knew the muggle version though.”

“I thought the rules were the same?” Abby says, puzzled.

“They are,” he laughs then and adds, “Muggle chess is a little easier for beginners though because the pieces don’t try and ‘help’,” that makes Abby laugh as well, glowering good-naturedly at her ‘helpful’ bishop.

After their first teaching game Abby decides she likes it and understands most of the basics now and so they end up playing several more, much shorter, ‘proper’ games, each of which Marcus wins.

While she might not be very good at chess yet it turns out that she is highly observant and intuitive as she makes clear mid-way through their second game. Abandoning the match for a moment she follows his rather wistful gaze down to the lake where another group of fifth years, Hufflepuffs he knows, are chatting and throwing food scraps pilfered from the Great Hall to the giant squid.

Smiling slightly at this she leans in and says quietly, “He’s single, you know.”

“What?” he splutters, feeling his face turning crimson, trying to avert his gaze and look innocent, knowing that she’s caught him out and quite sure that she knows that too.

“He’s in my muggle studies class, he’s sweet,” she says casually while he desperately tries to remember how to breathe properly, “I’ll introduce you tomorrow,” she continues, her tone light and matter-of-fact, “If you’ll give your friend Jake a note from me?”

Still blushing furiously he finds himself nodding and saying, “Yeah, that’d be...yeah, okay.”

They return to their chess match after that, both of them grinning rather broadly and feeling pleased with themselves. The bell rings half-way through their fourth game, interrupting them and both of them jump violently, having completely lost track of time. They hurry back towards the castle with Abby continuing on inside for Transfiguration while Marcus veers towards the Herbology greenhouses.

“I had fun today,” she says before they part, scribbling down the note he had promised to deliver to Jake for her on a scrap bit of parchment and pressing it into his hand, “I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other from now on,” she says with a playful smile.

“Yeah,” he says with a tentative smile of his own, which she returns, then darts inside to get to class.

“See you, Marcus!” she calls over her shoulder.

“Bye,” he calls back, too quietly for her to hear at the distance they’re at, thinking that he’s going to enjoy spending more time with Abby Waters in future.

****


	2. Cover Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake's death, the fracturing of their relationship: Modern AU/Cop AU: Marcus and Jake are partners on the police force of a small, seaside town. Abby, the local doctor, is married to Jake and close to their mutual friend in Marcus. A freak shooting accident leaves Jake dead and Marcus to try and console her and unravel the awful truth.

 Part 2 – Cover Me

 

The wound on his head throbs with every beat of his heart. It’s as though it’s forcing waves of pain through his body instead of just blood. But the stinging graze is nothing to the feeling that rises like bile in the back of his throat and threatens to overwhelm him as he looks out over the scene once more, then instantly wishes he hadn’t.

_Cover me._

He flinches as though struck and averts his eyes from the scene, the flashback, so short and fleeting, pressed upon his mind like a hot brand then removed before it had a chance to make a lasting impression, that he could almost wonder whether it had really happened, if it wasn’t for the shot of adrenaline that also courses through his system like poison making his heart thump even faster and harder than before.

Though there’s not much left out here that could trigger anything, he supposes. It’s so peaceful and quiet now that he could almost believe he had imagined it, imagined it all, that it had been a dream, a nightmare; that it had never happened at all.

What he remembers now is so fragmented and disjointed he knows if he lets it his mind will manage to convince him that it’s not real. And a part of him almost wants to let it. Because it would have been so much easier if that were the case.

 _Cover me, Kane._  

It had all happened so fast. He had never really understood what that meant when he heard other people say it, in books or films it had just seemed like an overly dramatic phrase that had slowly grown into a well-worn cliché for violent trauma. But now he knows it’s more than that. Now he understands it altogether too fully and completely.

Chaos. Chaos that the human brain had never evolved to handle; pure, unbridled, untameable chaos that had spread out and covered the world as surely and swiftly as a forest fire with the violence he associated with a natural disaster.

 For a moment he had been certain that he had somehow managed to fall into a battlefield. Bullets had rained down upon him, people were yelling in fright, screaming in pain, blood spattered across his vision and down into his eye from the graze on his forehead, the acrid stench of gunpowder and the faint haze cast up from the guns had filled the air like pipe smoke.

Sights and sounds and smells and sensations had bombarded his senses without consideration or mercy like a loose hurricane. Each one strengthened and sharpened by the fear that pounded through his system.

He didn’t have time to feel anything other than that all-consuming terror that rose up from the depths of his soul as his body reacted to one thing and one thing alone: the thought that he was about to die, that at any moment a bullet would rip through his chest and shred his heart to pieces and the thought the way that petrified him because he wasn’t ready for that.

He hadn’t had time to think either. He had only been able to react. And that process had bypassed his brain entirely. He became fully aware of some deep instincts he had never known he possessed and they dictated every movement he had made in those horrifying few minutes that had lasted an eternity, the effects of which would haunt him until the day he died.

It had all begun with barely a warning. The first shot had been fired; he couldn’t say even now who had fired it. It could have been them, it could have been Jake, it could have been _him,_ he had no idea. But once that first shot had left the barrel of its gun, chaos had reigned supreme and nothing and no-one mattered to it anymore but death and violence and destruction and he had been swept away in that. It had ended just as swiftly as it had begun, all taking place in a way that made it feel both eternal and so fast that he wasn’t quite sure it had happened.

And then...Then...But he wasn’t going to think about ‘then’ he had promised himself that.

_Cover me!_

He had gone. He remembers that, the thing he doesn’t want to remember, so of course he does. But he had gone. Just like that. With no warning. He doesn’t remember him getting up or running or explaining or any of it. He just remembers those words, echoing over and over and over again in his head like a mantra, “Cover me,” the ghost of a grin upon his lips. Then he was gone. Just like that. With no warning.

And all that’s left is silence.

The sharp sound of a car door slamming nearby jerks him back to his surroundings, Jake’s last words fading to some distant part of his brain that he can ignore for now. Looking up he sees Abby striding towards the scene with a steady, determined, if strangely distant, look in her eye, her jaw set, her muscles clenched.

Without conscious thought, without ever instructing his body to do so, without realising it, he’s on his feet and moving towards her.

People call after him, stress and concern and protest in the voices who’s owners he can’t identify and with blood rushing against his skull like a furious tide, his heart banging in his chest like the pounding of war drums and the world pitching violently and alarmingly beneath his feet he has a vague understanding of why.

But it doesn’t matter, it can’t matter, he can’t matter right now. All that matters is Abby. He has to get to Abby. She must not know, he thinks, with the confident certainty of ignorance, they can’t have told her properly, she must only have heard that there was an incident, but she can’t know how it ended, she can’t know that her husband is dead.

And he can’t let her find out like this, utterly unprepared, seeing him, seeing his body broken and somehow diminished, as though death had shrunk him, as though his size had come from his soul not his body, from the life and the laughter that had burned through it every day. And now it was gone. It was all gone. He was gone.

But he can’t let Abby see him like that, he has to get her, he has to stop her, he has to protect her. That- even in his thoughts he falters at the sudden brutality of change- that would be what Jake would have wanted.

_Cover me, partner._

 “Abby,” he says, stumbling out in front of her and blocking her path, preventing her from moving any closer to the scene, to Jake, “Abby, come on,” he says quietly, gently taking her arm and trying to lead her away somewhere private and quiet where he can tell her what’s happened, “Come with me now.”

To his surprise she wrenches away from him with a startling strength, her eyes blazing, “No,” is all she says, shortly, harshly, then attempts to force her way past him.

“No, Abby,” he tries, thrown by her reaction, struggling to place himself between her and her husband’s body before she has to see him like that once more, “You don’t understand,” he breathes desperately, “There’s nothing you can do for him now. You can’t help him, please come with me.”

“Get out of my way, Marcus,” she snarls at him through gritted teeth, still trying to bull past him, taking hold of him and attempting to force him out of the way. But shock and blood loss or not he still weighs considerably more than she does and is a head and shoulders taller and he refuses to allow her to push him aside.

“Abby you don’t understand,” he says again, feeling an increasing sense of panic blossoming like a firework inside his  chest in his fight to make her stop and listen to him.

“I want to be with my husband,” she snarls at him, a fury that he would never have known her to possess shining in her eyes which, now he comes to see up close, are sparkling with the faint sheen of tears.

“You can’t,” he chokes out, fighting to keep his voice level, to suppress the emotions that are threatening to drown him in order to take care of her, “You can’t, Abby, Abby he’s-“ she tries to force her way past him again and succeeds in pressing forward a few steps which forces him to grab her arm and say roughly, “Abby he’s dead, there’s nothing you can do for him, he, he’s gone.”

She stops fighting him then at last, going slack in his grip, the strength flooding out of her as she goes limp against him. But she doesn’t break down as fully as he had expected, doesn’t scream or cry or drop the ground or seize him and shake him and demand that he tell her it’s a lie, that it’s not true, that he’s okay. He knows then that something’s wrong and he opens his mouth to ask her something he doesn’t even know what to try and clarify the issue.

 But she spares him the necessity of finding words he doesn’t have a moment later when she whispers softly, “I know. I know,” her whole body shudders violently at the admission and the tears in her eyes become even more pronounced, “The captain called,” she tells him in barely more than a whisper, “Right after he-“ she breaks off, overcome then swallows hard and tries again, “Right after it happened.”

Marcus only stares at her for a few long minutes, dumbfounded. It’s taking so long now for his shocked, numb brain to string things together and he can’t make sense of this, can’t understand why she’s come, can’t understand what she’s doing and the foolish, insensitive question spills out of his mouth before he can stop it, “Then what are you doing here?”

Straightening herself up she takes a deep breath, swallowing hard past her grief and looks straight into his eyes, her gaze hard and steely with that stubborn determination he knew Jake loved in her, “I’m here to look after him,” she says, her voice shaking ever so slightly despite her best efforts, “I’m the only doctor in this town and, and it’s only coroner too. Let me do my job, Marcus.”

He stares at her aghast, unable to comprehend what she’s saying to him, what she’s here for, what she wants to do, what she thinks she has to do. Finally, he finds his voice again and manages to croak, “You can’t, Abby.”

“Watch me,” she snarls fiercely, her eyes flashing, and without warning she resumes her efforts to get past him to the scene instead.

“Abby, no!” he cries hopelessly, seizing her by the shoulders and holding her in place while pain spasms through his ribs and he remembers, dimly, for the first time, falling on them after the bullet had grazed his forehead, “Abby, please,” he pants, the effort of trying to hold her back while she struggles like a caged wildcat telling in the strain of his words, “Abby you can’t, you can’t do this, it’s a mistake, please-“

“Let go of me, Marcus,” she demands and hot tears splash out of her eyes as she asks it of him, as she begs it of him and he understands her grief and her pain and her desire to go to the man she loved, the father of her child, to see him, to see for herself because without that she doesn’t think she can really believe that he’s actually gone, to want to be with him one last time, to say goodbye even though it’s already too late but he can’t let her. He has to harden his heart to the struggles they both share, he has to keep her here, he has to find some argument to stop her from doing this.

“I can’t, Abby,” he says, his body shaking with the effort of restraining her and she suddenly melts against him, her fist pounding weakly, helplessly against his chest as she suddenly stops struggling.

“Why?” she whispers, her eyes still full of tears she’s now refusing to shed, trying to be strong, trying to look composed, trying to force him to accept that she can handle this, “Why can’t you? Why won’t you let me go to my husband?”

He considers so many different ways of answering that question, each flashing through his head at once, and in the end settles for the one that’s least painful, the one that’s easiest to get out past the thick lump in his own throat, “It’s, it’s against protocol, Abby, you know that,” he says, with a valiant effort at upholding the rules when there don’t seem to be any, when there can’t be any, because if there were how could Jake Griffin have been allowed to die like this?

“Protocol?” she repeats in a constricted whisper that tells him instantly he should have fought through his own pain and tried to find another, better argument for why she shouldn’t do this, “Protocol?” she says again, her voice stronger this time and now there’s anger in it, all the fury that she feels at the world for stripping her loved one away from her is being directed at him instead, “Screw protocol, I don’t give a damn about protocol, Marcus, that’s my husband!” she says, her voice rising to an awful shout, “Your partner? Don’t you care? Don’t you feel anything about that? How can you be so cold? How can you say that, how- he was your _friend_.” She screams at him in dire accusation.

“I know that,” he cuts across her swiftly, “I know he was my friend, my partner, your husband,” he says all in a rush, the words spilling out one after the other.

A strange, awful, chilling imitation of calm spreads through him as he retreats further and further within himself, retreats to the realm of things he can understand, the things that he can cling to to get him through this, the rules, the guidelines, what he’s supposed to do in an instance like this forcing him to act that way because otherwise he’ll collapse in on himself, he’ll breakdown and he’ll let his grief overwhelm and consume him and he can’t let that happen so he does the only thing he can, he shuts down and blocks it all out and tries to appear cool and rational and logical.

“That’s what I want to do this right, Abby,” he implores her, wondering if he really believes what he’s saying or if they’re just the words he’s supposed to say, “We have to do this right, for Jake,” he says, his words growing a little stronger, “You can’t go in there and I can’t go in there,” he says, “It’s too personal, you’re too close, it’s a conflict of interest,” on and on the words and phrases leap from his lips as though if he says them with enough conviction he can force them to be true, he can force them to be enough, he can force them to help, “Anything you touched would be inadmissible in court and-“

But something breaks in her then, he can see it in her eyes and she begins struggling against him once more with a furious strength beyond anything she’s yet displayed and he feels himself being forced back a step as she yells at him, “Court? I don’t give a damn about court, Marcus, I don’t give a damn about the investigation. I don’t give a damn about the trial. I don’t give a damn about your so-called _justice,_ ” she spits at him, venom dripping from every syllable, “There isn’t enough justice in the world to make this alright, there isn’t enough justice to make me feel better about this, there isn’t enough justice to bring him back so what’s the point?”

She’s crying again, he realises, he can feel her hot tears falling onto his shirt but it doesn’t stop her fighting with every bit of desperate, grief-stricken bit of strength she has as she explodes, “I just want to be with my husband.”

“I, I can’t let you do that, Abby,” he says, his voice shaking as he struggles to remember all the arguments he had as to why not, “I can’t, you have to stop, you can’t.”

“Please,” she whispers, her voice cracking and then breaking before she can stop it, “Please, it’s my job.”

“He’s your husband, Abby,” he whispers back, trying to be gentle yet firm at the same time, cold and emotionless, the way he has to be, for her own good, even as he tries both to restrain her and hold her back at the same time just holding her, embracing her, trying to comfort her, “I’ve, I’ve called a coroner from the city, he’s going to come and handle this and-“

“No!” she bursts out, her voice returning to full volume once more, “No, I want to do it. I have to do it. He’s my _husband_ , my husband, Marcus,” she chokes out, desperately trying to make him understand, just as desperately as she’s fighting to get away from him, “I don’t want someone else touching him and, and-“ her breathing hitches, hysteria rising with her grief and she trembles violently, unable to continue for a moment then she gasps out, “It should be me, he’s mine, he’s my, he’s- it should be me.”

“Abby,” he murmurs quietly, waiting until she makes reluctant eye contact with him before he says so softly if they weren’t so close she would have struggled to make it out, “You don’t want to see him like this. You don’t want your last memories of him to be this,” he tells her gently, steadily holding her gaze and at last feeling her stop struggling to get away so violently, “Remember him in better times.”

Anguish wracks her and she tries to shove away from him again, “You don’t understand-“ she chokes out, breaking off at the look on his face, the shadows that seem to consume his eyes for a moment, the way his muscles all tense and he has to fight to keep his own composure.

“We both know that I do,” he breathes finally, so softly she has to strain to hear him, “You should remember him. You introduced us, after all.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, looking genuinely upset at her slip, “I didn’t mean, I only,” she screws up her face, trying to remain composed, trying to explain to him as grief and rage and sadness well up inside her all at once, “I have to be with him, Marcus,” she says, her distress evident in every syllable, “I have to be with him, I have to look after him.”

“I’ll look after him for you,” he finds himself promising softly, “I’ll catch the bastard who did this to him, I promise I will, okay, I promise,” she’s staring up at him her eyes wide and he adds in a slightly choked voice, “Just, just come with me now, okay? Away from here, let me take you home, please?”

It takes a lot more coaxing on his part but finally she agrees to let him drive her home and wait with her for a little while with the promise that he’ll explain what happened to her as best he can and help her make sense of everything.

When they arrive at what was her and Jake’s home he watches her carefully as she walks up the front path to the door. Her hands shake slightly as she struggles to insert the key into the lock, fumbling slightly and he reaches down and gently covers her smaller hand with his own and helps her. She had been remarkably calm the whole way there in the car, barely speaking, spending most of her time staring out of the window with a distant look in her eyes, her mind miles away, with Jake, he was sure.

Almost as soon as she steps into the house, becoming immediately surrounded by all of his things, photographs on the wall, being hit with the realisation that he’s never going to be here with her again, she breaks down completely for what he thinks is the first time since she’d heard the news. Before that her brain had dulled the emotional blow by telling her she had a job to do, that she had to go and get him and take care of him, and now that that’s gone and she’s come home she’s been forced to face all of the grief and agony she had been numbing in any way she could up to this point.

Slowly, Marcus kneels down on the floor beside her and very tentatively puts an arm around her shoulders. She makes no move to throw him off or try and pull away from the contact so he starts rubbing her back, trying to soothe her as she struggles for breath between the wracking, consuming sobs that are making her whole body shake and convulse violently.

After a little while she turns to him and buries her face against his body, her chest heaving with the physical strain of her grief and he puts his arms around her and draws her in closer, trying to comfort her, bracing himself against the back of her couch as he feels tears sting in his own eyes but he tries not to let her see.

“It’ll get easier,” he whispers vaguely to her once she’s calmed down enough to hear him, softly stroking her hair and trying to make it so already.

“You’re telling me it won’t hurt anymore?” she asks, her voice hoarse and raw from crying.

“No,” he says, shaking his head, “But it will get easier to bear, easier to numb, easier to push back down, easier to wall off in a corner of your brain where you don’t have to think about it every minute of every day.”

Detaching herself ever so slightly from him she looks up at him and whispers softly, “You still miss him,” it’s not a question but he nods anyway, throat suddenly too tight for speech, “You still love him,” he nods again and she shakes her head and makes a sad little disbelieving exhalation, “And this is easier?”

“You just have to....to survive it,” he says haltingly, trying to explain to her, “Until one day it stops feeling like survival and it starts feeling like living again.”

“Is that what it feels like for you?” she breathes softly.

“No,” he admits quietly, not flinching from it, “I just...Keep hoping that one day it will.”

“And that’s enough?” she asks him hoarsely, her eyes over-bright, searching him, seeming to look straight through him to the naked soul beneath that hasn’t been whole for years, mirroring her newly broken one with an agony he never wished upon her.

“It has to be,” he says quietly looking down at her, “We have to keep going for them,” he says softly to her, his fingers still absentmindedly stroking her hair, trying to calm her down.

She nods shakily and, after a moment, forces herself to her feet. He scrambles up as well and steers her into the chair he was leaning against then excuses himself to the kitchen to boil the kettle for tea and try to gather himself for what’s coming next. He knows he’s going to have to relive it again for her, he knows that she needs to hear what happens, that she needs him to tell her so she can start processing things and a part of him knows that he should do it as well but it terrifies him.

 _Cover me_.

Jake’s voice whispers into the silence again and it’s a relief when the kettle whistles and gives him something else to think about, if only for a second, as he busies himself making tea, adding milk and sugar and a shot of whiskey into each, feeling that they need it, then carries the cups back through to the living room.

It takes a moment to stop her staring straight ahead at the opposite wall and get her attention focused on him instead at which point she apologises rather croakily and accepts her tea with a soft word of thanks.

He settles himself in the chair opposite her with a growing sense of dread, gripping his own mug so tightly he’s afraid that it will shatter. Taking a sip of it to fill a few seconds he feels the hot tea scald his throat at the same time the whiskey adds a sharp kick to it and both sensations warm him and make him feel a little better than he did a moment before.

She takes a long time in doing so but finally she just looks straight up at him and whispers the words he’s been waiting for ever since he got her home, “I need to know, Marcus. I need you to tell me. I need you to tell me how my husband died.”

For all the time he’d spent expecting it and trying to brace himself for it he still has no idea how to answer her question and he gazes into the depths of his mug, watching steam slowly rise from the surface before he finally forces himself to look up at her, swallow hard, and try and explain.

“We, we left our usual patrol when we got a call about a disturbance on the edge of town,” he explains, his mouth and throat bone dry despite the tea and whiskey, “When we got there Jake tried to talk them down, to get them to surrender themselves. They opened fire instead,” he knows he’s being vague, knows that this barely tells her anything but he can’t help it. He can barely scrape together enough fragments to form a basic outline of what happened never mind think of details.

“He, he asked me to cover him,” Marcus says, his voice shaking, and Jake’s voice echoes through his brain.

He shuts his eyes for a moment and he’s back there and he can hear bullets flying like hailstones towards him and the acrid taste of fear is heavy on his tongue and his heart is pounding as though it’s sure it’s about to be forced to stop, that he’s about to die and it has to get in a lifetime of beats before that happens. Then he forces himself to open his eyes again and realises that he’s trembling and Abby’s hand is on his, recalling him to himself.

Swallowing hard again he coughs and manages to say, “He asked me to cover him and moved to take up a different position but...but he, he got hit and I-“ he breaks off, one hand clenched into a fist so hard his nails are digging into his palm, the other gripping his mug so tightly he’s losing fingers in his fingers and he realises that she’s crying, silent tears pouring down her cheeks, “I’m sorry, Abby, I’m so sorry.”

She’s just clinging onto his hand with a desperate strength and shaking all over, her fingers contracting tightly against his. “It wasn’t your fault, Marcus,” she whispers quietly, “It wasn’t your fault.”

Taking a deep breath he looks up at her and promises solemnly, “I’m going to do find out who did it, Abby. I promise.”

 _Cover me,_ Jake whispers his never ending last words echoing once more in the back of Marcus’ mind.

****

_Again the alert comes through, a disturbance on the fringes of town. Again Jake responds. And again Marcus silently screams at him to stop, to turn around, to return to the patrol and ignore the call to arms. Again Jake follows the commands they’re given, not hearing his friend’s desperate warning._

_Again they drive to the sheltered stretch of open ground. Again they see the assailant standing there, facing them down. His face changes every time, the details blurring and slipping, but the gun remains the same._

_Again he fires it. Again they dive out of the car, reaching for their own weapons. Again his heart hammers and the thunderous howl of bullets flying in every direction erupts through his eardrums. Again Jake turns to him and whispers those fateful words, the words that have been repeating endlessly in his brain. Cover me. They echo over and over long after Jake has sprung to his feet and run away from him, run towards his death._

_Again Marcus calls after him, desperate, pleading. Again he pleads with him to stay. Again he begs him to come back. Again he doesn’t listen, he just vanishes, snatched away as though by a breath of wind and taken somewhere Marcus can’t find him or help him, where his horrified cries can’t reach him anymore. Again he’s just gone._

_Again, in dream, though it had never been in life, Marcus fires a final shot that takes down the assailant. And again he jumps to his feet and runs to him, to see the face of the man who gunned down his friend, who left his wife and child alone, to see the face of the man responsible for Jake’s murder, to know this time, to have something to tell them at the station, to have someone to find, someone to blame, someone to exact justice on._

_But this time, when he turns over the man’s body, he doesn’t find a grim, snarling stranger. He finds Jake. Crying out in wordless panic he stumbles back and away, horrified, remembering the way the bullet had torn through his chest. A moment later he’s dropped back to the ground as Jake stirs, his eyes fluttering open, blood trickling from the corner of his lips._

_Marcus crouches down beside him, unsure of what to do or how to react. Jake clings to his shoulder, his lips struggling to form words. He feels the expectation of what’s to come, his last words, the words that have haunted him over and over again for weeks now. Jake struggles, choking on his words making soft ‘k’ ‘k’ ‘k’ sounds and Marcus nods, gripping his shoulder, trying to spare him, “I know,” he murmurs softly, trying to put his friend at ease, “I know, Jake, I will,” he promises, “I will.”_

_But when Jake finally manages to form the words they’re not the ones that he expects at all. With his final death rattle he gasps out in a faint, strangled whisper, “Kill me.”_

Marcus jerks awake, chest heaving, sweat coating his skin, the sheets slipping away from him in the dark, fighting the urge to be sick. Trembling he buries his face in his hands, hunching in on himself as though to protect himself from the lingering agony of the nightmare, remaining curled in on himself until it finally passes and he’s able to sit up again.

He forces himself out of bed without checking the clock to see the time, without thinking about it, just certain that he doesn’t want to stay there a second longer, feeling like he’s suffocating. Kicking off the sheets he pads immediately into the bathroom and clambers into the shower without even waiting for it to heat up properly. The icy sting of the cold water is a shock to his system and it jolts him back to his senses somewhat. He stands there, trying to wash away the stain of the dream that still clings to him like cheap perfume, trying to forget it, trying to move on from it and from the ballistics report shoved out of sight but never out of mind in the drawer beside his bed.

Closing his eyes he leans against the wall and tries to compose himself. Knowing that he has to go and see Abby today and give her an updated report of the case doesn’t make the idea of climbing out of the shower cubicle the least bit but eventually he forces himself to do so when he hears the alarm clock blaring at him in the next room and stumbles to turn it off.

Shrugging into some clothes he bypasses the kitchen and just heads out, deciding that he doesn’t want to put this off any longer, she needs to know what he knows and the sooner he gets it out in the open the better it will be. This logic is no longer as comforting when he’s knocking on her front door twenty minutes later, listening to the sounds of movement from inside but by that point it’s too late to change his mind.

When she opens the door he feels the familiar pang of quickly concealed pity and sadness. Her grief is written plainly across her face and her eyes are hollow and shadowed where before he remembers them being bright and agile and full of life and hope. He asks quietly if he can come in and she nods once, stepping back to let him pass by her into the hall before she takes the lead again and takes him through into the sitting room.

“Would you like something to drink?” she asks him quietly and he nods,

“Yes, thank you,” thinking that it might at least take up another few minutes before he has to tell her.

She returns with coffee for both of them, knowing well by now how he takes it, then sits herself in the chair opposite. He thanks her for his cup then takes a small, measured sip, glancing up at her over the rim. Clearing his throat he asks, “Where’s Clarke?”

“At school,” Abby replies quietly.

That gives him a little bit of a shock, “Isn’t it too soon?” he blurts out.

Abby just shrugs tiredly, “She said she was ready,” she explains to him, “She said that she wanted to go back to school, to be with her friends again. I thought that was healthier than stewing at home here with no-one but her grieving mother for company...” she trails off and Marcus finds himself nodding as though he understands but all he can think of is Abby at home, alone, waiting constantly for news, for something to alleviate some of her grief. Maybe he can give that to her today, but the cost that it comes at...

Abby sits up a little straighter than and says softly, “Do you have news? A development in the investigation? You said you would keep me posted.”

“I, I do,” he admits, leaning forwards and placing his mug gently on a coaster on the little coffee table, making a meal of placing so that it’s perfectly centred.

Swallowing hard he finally looks up at her and says, his voice hoarse, “We know...We know who kil-who, who was responsible for Jake’s death.”

She sits up so quickly and abandons her cup on the table with such force that hot coffee sloshes out over the table and she grips the arms of her chair so tightly the tips of her fingers turn white, “Who?” she demands, eyes flashing, leaning towards him, “Who was it? Have you got them? What happened?”

Taking a deep breath and trying to compose himself he shifts uncomfortably in his chair and then says slowly, “It...You, you have to understand that when it happened, when they started shooting at us I didn’t see, I didn’t know to begin with it was all just, just chaos and confusion and-“ he breaks off, unable to look her in the eyes, knowing she desperately needs him to say the thing he’s not sure that he can anymore, “He asked me to cover him while he got into a better position so that we had a better chance of containing the situation,” he tries to explain to her, “But I couldn’t see where he was, where he’d run to it was all just, and there were bullets flying everywhere and-“

“Marcus,” she whispers, leaning forwards and gripping his hand, her eyes wide and shining with tears again, “Just tell me,” she begs him softly, “Just tell me who killed my husband.”

Against his will, against every instinct urging him not to, he looks up into her eyes as he whispers the next few words, “I did.”

She stares at him. The small, warm hand resting on his withdraws from him. She just gazes at him, a mixture of horror and grief and disbelief in her eyes. Then she stops and shakes her head and to his surprise reaches out and grips his arm tightly again, “No, Marcus,” she says quietly, shaking her head, “You can’t, you can’t blame yourself for what happened. There was nothing you could have done, I know that. You weren’t responsible.”

A part of him wants to nod, to agree, to tell her that she’s quite right, that he was being stupid, but he can’t, he can’t lie to her, not like that, not about something like this and he finds himself shaking his head and breathing, “I was, Abby,” his voice shakes but he forces himself to go on, “It was me. I shot him. I killed him.”

Shaking her head as though if she does that enough, with enough force she can make it so, “Stop it,” she says, shaking her head, “Stop it, Marcus this is-“ she breaks off, still shaking her head, “You can’t have done.”

“It was me,” he admits to her, and every time he says it, every time the words leave his lips he feels another part of himself crumble to ashes, lost, without hope of recovery, “It was an accident,” he chokes, closing his eyes and realising that he’s shaking violently again.

She pushes herself to her feet, crossing her arms over her chest as though trying to protect herself from what she’s telling her. He’s not sure if it’s easier to say these things with her back to her, meaning that he doesn’t have to look into her eyes and see the agony in them as he keeps talking.

“It was an accident,” he says again, imploring her to listen to him, to believe him, to understand, “I never meant-“ he breaks off again, having to swallow past the lump in his throat to enable him to keep talking, “I never meant for him to get hurt it just...It was just...He got up and ran and...There were bullets flying everywhere. I didn’t know where he was, I didn’t know what was happening, I...I don’t remember doing it,” he confesses to her and though he’s seen it every night in his dreams since he got the report back he still doesn’t remember, still can’t fix it in his mind, still can’t tell her exactly how it happened because he doesn’t know, “I don’t know how it happened, I don’t, I, I only found out when they sent me ballistics but I...I never meant for it to happen.”

He had been his partner. He had been there to have his back. He was supposed to keep him safe, to make sure he got home to his family. Instead...He had killed him.

Silence expands between them like lungs opening out and draining all of the air from the room and he wants her to say something, anything, to just look at him so that she can see, so that she can know. But she doesn’t. And he finds himself continuing to talk to try and coax her to look at him or just because he has to try and assuage his own guilt, or because this is the first time he’s said any of this aloud since it happened.

“I never meant for it to happen, Abby, I swear. It just happened, happened so fast and one minute he was there beside me and then the next he was running and then the next he was de-“

“Stop,” she commands him suddenly, making him falter, speaking for the first time, her voice cracked and hoarse, “Stop, don’t say any more, I don’t want to hear, I don’t want, I-“ she breaks off, taking a long, shuddering breath, and, still not looking at him she says softly, “I think...I think you should go now.”

He gets to his feet but he makes no move towards the door, instead moving hesitantly towards her instead, “I’m sorry,” he whispers to her back, reaching out to her and placing a soft, comforting hand on her shoulder, “I’m so sorry-“

She turns to him, eyes blazing, throwing off his hand and he’s never seen such anger, such grief, such fury, such _hatred_ in her eyes before, “Get out,” she hisses, her voice barely controlled.

“Abby-“

“ _Now,_ Kane,” she snarls at him, her hands curling themselves into fists by her sides and he pauses for half a heartbeat, swaying on the spot before he bows his head and moves for the door, not wishing to upset her anymore than he has done already.

As the door closes behind him he can hear her sinking to the floor, howling, all of the things she held back while he was still there, not wanting him to see, not wanting to be vulnerable in front of him. He feels himself harden his heart once again as he moves away from the house, knowing that things have changed between them forever after his admission.

*****

 


	3. Out Of Favour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post Jake's death, leading into early season 1: The Hunger Games AU; a future dystopian world in which the governing body of the Capitol oppresses the surrounding districts, forcing children from each to compete in a deadly contest which is televised as a source of entertainment for the Capitol and a reminder of the punishment of rebellion for the districts. During the next reaping, Abby's 16 year old daughter Clarke's name is drawn leaving Marcus, as a victor of a previous Games, to be her mentor.

Part 3 – Out Of Favour

“Happy Hunger Games!” the bubbly young woman announces to the still and silent crowd before her.

Abby forms a part of that quiet mass of terrified people, desperate parents all around her, each praying the same prayer for their children. Though not all of their prayers will be answered, she knows.

Abby watches the macabre display before her because she must, because she’s forced to, even though the sight of that young woman on stage, the glass balls full of names; full of death sentences, trigger so much grief and anguish in her that she would break down in the middle of it all if it wouldn’t give them so much satisfaction. So she doesn’t.

 She stays strong. She faces the front. She holds her head high. She doesn’t flinch when she hears the words, “And may the odds be _ever_ in your favour!” She barely reacts at all when she walks towards the ball containing the girls’ names; it’s not the one she still has nightmares about. The cheery babble of, “Ladies first!” barely penetrates her numb brain. She doesn’t even blink as the slip of paper is unfolded, only feels a faint pang of pity for the family about to lose a daughter, a sister, a part of their soul.

When the name on the piece of paper is read out to the crowd however, she sinks to her knees. All of the fight goes out of her in an instant. All of the air seems to have been forced from her lungs, as though she’s fallen from space into the endless vacuum that’s stolen all of her breath. And the name echoes around in her head over and over and over and over again.

“Clarke Griffin.”

*****

_No. No, oh God no. Please no. Not again. Not again, I can’t. Please. Let it be wrong. Let it be a mistake. Not my daughter. Not again._

She doesn’t remember falling. She doesn’t remember finding herself on the ground, her knees stinging sharply, a large crowd of people hovering concernedly around her, the loudest silence she’s ever endured pounding in her ears.

Strong arms slide gently around her body and help lift up, gently setting her on her feet again. The words ‘thank you’ are stuck in the back of her throat when she turns to see who’s helping her and her gratitude turns to fury and she wrenches away from him so hard that she staggers a few steps to one side, “Don’t, don’t touch me, Kane,” she spits at him, anger coming to her defence and sending a much needed shock of adrenaline pounding through her veins.

“Abby-“ he begins as she turns and begins to force her way through the crowd, none of whom make any attempt whatsoever to bar her path to her daughter, standing alone where the rest of the kids around her have moved back, as though she’s tainted, as though they both are, no-one that is except Kane who bulls right on after her and catches her arm again.

“I said don’t touch me!” she snaps furiously at him, stopping only long enough to turn and snarl at him.

“There’s nothing you can do,” he says quietly but insistently, his hand still firmly gripping her upper arm, “Stay here-“

“The hell I will,” she snarls, struggling fiercely and pulling away from him again, “She’s my daughter, my _daughter,_ Kane-“

“I know,” he whispers urgently, stepping around her and blocking her path to Clarke, “I’m sorry,” he murmurs and he looks it but she doesn’t care about that right now, can’t care about it right now.

“They can’t have my daughter. They can’t take her. I won’t let them,” she hisses, her hands curling into fists, her nails biting so hard and so deeply into her palm that she draws blood, tiny, scarlet beads of the dark, hot liquid well between her fingers and she would give them that and more if it would spare her daughter, she would shed all the blood they want to see herself if they would promise that Clarke would be safe and untouched.

Kane’s outline in front of her is blurred and uneven and though he’s considerably taller and heavier and in theory stronger than she is, she still manages to force her way past him and push closer to where her daughter stands, rooted to the spot, her eyes turned towards her mother, ignoring the woman on stage who’s trying to coax her up to join her.

“Abby they’ve been doing this for seventy five years,” Kane snaps tersely at her, “You’re just going to make her look weak-“

“She’s a _child_ ,” she hisses at him, voice rising hysterically, “She’s sixteen years old. And she is my daughter. I’m not losing her, Kane, I’m not, I can’t-“ her voice cracks and she angrily rubs the tears out of her eyes as she pushes him roughly aside and at last reaches her daughter.

“Clarke-“ she chokes, reaching forwards and cupping her daughter’s cheek in her hands, brushing her hair back behind her ear, the way Jake used to, she realises a moment after she does it and that sends another lance of grief shooting through her soul but she smothers it, pushes it down. She’s practiced at hiding her feelings, at appearing stronger than she is for her daughter’s sake.

“It’s going to be alright,” she promises softly, knowing that Kane is right, that it won’t be, that they’ll take her away whatever she does and hating him that little bit more for that fact, “I won’t let them,” she finds herself gabbling, “I won’t-“

“Mom,” Clarke murmurs quietly, gripping her hand in her own trembling one, “Mom it’s okay. It’s okay, I have to- you have to- just let go, it’s _okay_.”

Behind her, Kane has caught up to them and he gently but firmly takes Abby’s arm, his eyes meet Clarke’s and she notices the spark of fury and anger in her daughter’s eyes that she feels too whenever she looks at the man behind her, but after a moment she surprises her by nodding tersely. Abby feels Kane draw her away from the crowd, away from the podium that Clarke is climbing up on to, her face set, her eyes with that steely, determined expression in them, looking more like Jake than ever in that moment and it’s too much.

With a meekness she doesn’t, and never will feel, borne of grief and terror and the horrifying sense that history is about to repeat itself and force itself on her once more in a way she knows she isn’t ready for, she allows herself to be led away into a small, back room where Clarke will appear once again to say goodbye before she’s shunted onto the train that will take her away and might never bring her back home again.

Once she’s away from the cameras and the crowds and her daughter’s eyes she wrenches away from Kane’s touch once more and collapses to the floor again, the tears she had refused to shed earlier falling, spattering the thick carpet beneath her like drops of blood gushing from an open wound, but whether they’re from anguish or anger she still doesn’t know and she can’t bring herself to care.

Kane lifts her up again, only briefly this time, half carrying, half supporting her into a nearby chair. By the time she’s come to her senses enough to fight him and bite out the word, “Don’t!” he’s already released her and stepped back, lowering himself down into the chair opposite her, his face impassive, silent and cold, as emotionless and withdrawn as ever, like a statue chiselled from ice, seemingly indifferent to her grief, to her struggle, to her pain.

“I’ll be mentoring her,” Kane intones quietly, intruding upon her silent grief, but she barely hears him, and she doesn’t really process his words. The only purpose they serve is to break the silence and draw forth the words she’s been keeping back all this time, her fears and her doubts and her hideous certainties pouring from her in a tangled rush.

“This is because of Jake,” she chokes out, rocking slowly backwards and forwards on her chair, not looking at him, not even sure if she’s actually speaking to him or if she’s just speaking into thin air and praying somebody with the power to do something about it hears her, “It was fixed. Her name was only in there once. It had to be fixed. Victor’s children are always chosen. It makes better sport, better television, better entertainment,” her words are constricted and bitter as she says that, disgust rising up into the back of her throat like bile.

 “They chose her because of Jake but she’s....She’s just a child,” her voice breaks and softens, because faint and scared, echoing the way she feels, and the hollow emptiness inside her that Jake’s death created seems to expand to encompass her whole being as tears slide slowly down her cheeks, “She’s just a child, _my_ child, my daughter. I lost Jake,” she whispers, staring straight ahead of her, not registering her surroundings at all, not even sure why she’s saying all of this, except that the thought of keeping it pent up inside her any longer is almost more than she can bear, “I lost him and then she, she was all I had left. She _is_ all I have left...And now...” she can taste the salt from her tears on her lips as she whispers the awful truth to the world and waits for it to destroy her, the way it’s been trying to do for years, “And now I’m going to lose her to-“

“You’re not,” his voice, as flat and empty as ever cuts across her, interrupting her babbling for the first time, and for the first time since they entered this room together, for the first time maybe in years, she looks up at him, and properly sees him as she does so, “I’ll protect her.”

She stares blankly up at him, hearing but not understanding, “I’m her mentor,” Kane continues, his voice still quiet and far calmer than hers, “I’ll train her, teach her, find her sponsors, I’ll look after her the way,” he breaks off, some strange emotion clouding his eyes for the first time before he smothers it and looks up at her again, his gaze smooth and uninterrupted, his voice flat and even, if slightly quieter than before as he finishes, “The way I should have looked after him.”

She blanches, if he’d spoken about Jake that way to him at any other time she would have slapped him but something between them shifts and for the first time she sees the man who had once been her friend, her husband’s friend, like family, an uncle to her little girl, looking back at her from his haunted dark eyes and she bites back the angry retort that had risen so readily to her lips.

“I’ll bring her home,” Kane continues quietly, looking straight into her eyes now, neither of them flinching from it and a confused mixture of emotions wells up in her that she hasn’t finished processing before he adds softly, “Whatever I have to do.”

Looking at him now she can tell that he’s deadly serious, that what he’s saying to her now is more than a vow, more than a solemn promise, it’s a statement of fact, of truth, said to her in the starkest way possible and he means it, he means every word of it. She knows there’s nothing that he’ll shy from to save her daughter and the thought should be exhilarating, should be a relief, should make her pleased, but instead it chills her and terrifies her.

“You can’t push them too far,” she finds herself telling him quietly, even though he’s just sworn to protect her daughter, to bring her home, even though she should just keep quiet, let him do whatever he has to to save Clarke, she can’t. Something stops her, something prevents her from putting himself in such peril, something still connects her to him, something in her still wants to protect him, something in her, she realises with a faint shock, doesn’t want to lose him either, “They’ll kill you.”

He nods his head, almost imperceptibly, acknowledging her words, and then something that might have passed for a smile before but with the anguish in his cold eyes looks more a travesty now, he simply repeats, his words clear and precise and certain, “Whatever I have to do,” and she feels a strange sort of bond bind them together as he says it, cementing and solidifying when he adds, in a soft, faint whisper, his voice breaking slightly for the first time, “For him. For you.”

Their eyes meet again and for the first time in so long she realises that he was just as badly affected by what happened as she was.

_A Year Earlier:_

_They’re sitting together in Abby and Jake’s living room, Marcus beside them. Clarke has left the house, as she always does whenever this time of year comes round, staying with a friend or wandering the streets to avoid the announcements. But the three of them, bound together in the blood that’s been spilled over the years to bring them all to this point, sit together, like it’s a ritual, a tradition, a travesty of a Christmas Day-like gathering._

_Their President appears on-screen and Abby feels herself tense in spite of herself, loathing twisting in her gut at the sight of the man who’s put her family through so much. Jake places a tender arm around her shoulders instinctively, without tearing his eyes away from the screen and Marcus reaches down between them and gently squeezes her hand._

_He makes the usual announcements about what the Games mean, what a success they’ve been, on and on, continuing the oppression of decades with the silken words of a tongue gilded in poison. Then he goes on to explain about the special Quarter Quell event that everyone present is going to be so blessed to witness, the 75 th Games deserve to be honoured with a special type of entertainment. _

_Abby watches as he places a soft, moist hand into the tray before him and lifts out a golden envelope with a large silver ‘75’ emblazoned on its front from amidst rows and rows of others, the evidence that the Capitol plans to murder their children each year to keep the districts in their place._

_Clearing his throat, he reads from the card, “On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors.”_

_Marcus and Jake both react before she does. They both tense on either side of her and she finds herself looking between them, bemused, searching for an answer. Marcus’ face is tight, his jaw set, his eyes hard and cold, the look he had been trying to lose every day since he came home from winning his Games. Jake turns and pulls her into his arms and she can feel him trembling but it still hasn’t sunk in for her yet._

_She turns her head to look at Marcus, her eyes wide and questioning, wanting him to explain, to help her understand. He does. Looking into her eyes he says softly, “One of us is going to have to go back into the arena,” she stares at him, the full horror of the situation hitting her with the force of a freight train as she realises that, in a month or so, she’s unlikely ever to see one of the two men sitting on either side of her again._

_“They can’t do this,” she bursts out, startling Jake who releases her with a start and Marcus who jumps visibly beside her, “It’s not fair. You’ve already been through it. That was it. That was the end. It was supposed to be over, you were supposed to be safe now,” she rages, looking from one to the other, not able to imagine her life without either of them._

_Jake wraps his arms around her again, rubbing her back and stroking her hair as he says softly, “It’s okay, it’s okay- I- it’ll be okay, baby.”_

_She turns urgently to Marcus, hoping that he’ll have something that might soothe her fears but his eyes are dark and hollow and he just shakes his head and murmurs, “They’ll do what they’ve always done, Abby. What they want.”_

_****_

_Her heart pounds in her threat and her lungs feel as though they’ve been filled with solid lead with tight iron bands constricting her chest, preventing her from breathing, as she makes her way down to the square where every reaping has taken place in the district since the inception of the Games._

_Marcus has been more distant with them than she can ever remember the past month since the Quarter Quell announcement was made and when she sees him standing up on the podium as she kisses Jake and wishes him luck before reluctantly leaving his side he appears to already have been reaped and died in the arena because the person her husband moves up to stand beside looks like a ghost, pale and thin, eyes dark and haunted._

_She stops herself from moving up to speak to him, knowing that it’s about to start and that it’s going to be painful enough without her trying to strike up a conversation moments before._

_The anthem sounds and Abby stands in her allotted position, ignoring the young woman who steps up onto the stage to make the usual announcements, ignoring the video clips that play, ignoring the speeches, the explanations, all of the dramatic build-up, her eyes lingering on the two men standing on the stage, side by side._

_She barely notices which poor female tribute is selected to return, hearing the cries of anguish and horror from her family while she stands still as though carved from stone, her heart is too busy racing in anticipation for the next decision, the decision that could change the course of her life and her daughter’s life, the twisted lottery they’re all forced to play and spend their lives praying that their numbers never come up._

_The young woman moves towards the second reaping ball and Abby feels herself becoming faint and dizzy because of the lack of breath that’s moving into her lungs. She makes a show of scrabbling around the bowl, choosing first one slip of paper and then the other until Abby wants to launch herself up onto the stage and shake her and scream at her for playing with people’s lives in the casual, callous way she is._

_Then finally, she moves the paper from the bowl and opens it up, pausing for dramatic effect while Abby stands there, her fingernails biting into her palms, her whole body shaking, her skin as white as  chalk, bloodless, petrified, as she waits for the hammer to fall._

_“Marcus Kane!” the young woman cries and Abby feels a strange swooping sensation of relief in her stomach that it’s not Jake, that Clarke still has her father, she still has her husband, a relief that she hates herself for, even as her heart clenches tightly as the little colour that had been left in Marcus’ cheeks drains from them, leaving him standing there, a statue carved of white marble, shaking ever so faintly, just like her._

_Marcus steps forwards as though he’s in a trance, as though someone else is controlling his steps and moving his body, a puppet tugged and jerked into place by the strings connected to his limbs, his lips pressed tightly together, his eyes staring straight ahead of him, seeing no-one._

_“I volunteer.”_

_The voice cuts through the clamour and startles everyone in the crowd. Muttering sweeps through the people standing all around her but she doesn’t add her voice to the hum, her eyes just move slowly from the prone figure of Marcus standing rooted to the spot, eyes closing slowly, as though in pain, to her husband, who’s stepping forwards away from the back wall and heading towards the young woman where she stands between the two glass balls looking quite delighted at how dramatic her reaping has become._

_“I volunteer as tribute,” Jake repeats firmly, slipping in front of Marcus to make this statement quite clear._

_He’s deliberately, she’s sure, refusing to meet her eye so instead she turns to Marcus, beseeching him, silently, to stop Jake from doing this, to refuse to let this happen, but he just shrinks back into his previous position without a word, without even reacting to what’s happening, letting Jake take his place with silent acceptance. And a part of her, unfairly, and irrationally, hates him for that, for not even trying to protest, for just accepting it without comment._

_****_

_“Why?” she snarls, pacing up and down in the small room behind the stage where she’s saying her goodbyes to her husband with the understanding that, after today, she might never see him again. Clarke has already said goodbye, unable to bear waiting to see him actually leave the room for the last time and so it’s just the two of them alone together now, “Why Jake? Why did you do that?”_

_Her husband walks towards her and places his hands on either side of her shoulders, a gesture he’s used with her a hundred times before that’s always calmed her and settled her, she’s always allowed him to draw her in closer and hug her but not this time, she’s too agitated, too angry, too scared for him._

_“Kane would never have survived a second games,” he says evasively, not looking at her and taking far too long to answer her question for her to believe that that’s his real reason._

_She doesn’t have time to deeply interrogate him though and she finds herself ignoring these suspicions and blurting out the first thing that pops into her head, “And what about me, Jake?” she demands of him, trying to force her voice to remain stern and steady but unable to suppress the faint tremor in it, “What if I can’t survive this again?”_

_“You can,” he whispers, tenderly brushing a strand of her hair back behind her ear, “You will, you’re strong, you’re so strong; you’ll get through this I know you will.”_

_She changes tact at the speed of light, feeling herself melting and softening in response to his soft touch and gentle words and not wanting to, wanting to stay mad, wanting him to know how upset she is, “What about Clarke?” she shoots at him instead._

_For the first time she sees a spasm of pain flicker into his eyes but he masks it almost at once, “I’m doing this for Clarke,” he breathes softly, dipping down and lightly kissing her forehead._

_That more than anything else that’s happened so far breaks her, the tiny, intimate, domestic gesture that she knows might well be the last one she ever receives from him and this sense of mounting grief and panic is only intensified when the peacekeeper standing behind them says curtly, “It’s time, you have to come with me now, Mr Griffin.”_

_“No,” Abby says suddenly, stepping between them, turning desperately to Jake, “No, not again, I’m not letting them take you away from me.”_

_“They won’t,” Jake breathes, finally taking her in his arms and embracing her, she burrows into his chest, feeling his next words rumble through her, “I’ll come home to you, to both of you, I promise and when I do this will all be over, you’ll never have to worry about it again, Clarke will be safe.”_

_****_

_The Games have been on for over a week, they had whittled the former victors and current tributes down to the final eight, they had come here and interviewed her and Clarke about Jake, when it finally happened._

_She sits in her cold living room with Marcus on the chair beside her, a silent spectre watching without seeing anything that’s going on in front of him. She’s watched every second, barely sleeping or eating since he was taken, the same way she got through his first games and she watches then when it all goes wrong._

_She watches as one night, while he sleeps, the game-makers flood the valley where he had settled down to sleep and survive. She wants as he becomes trapped, every exit cut off, pinning him in place and not giving a chance. She watches as the water levels rise to swallow up the man she loves. She watches as the father of her child struggles and thrashes, wanting to reach out to him, to hold him in her arms, to protect him, to save him. She watches as the man she’s spent twenty years of her life with is murdered. She watches until the last desperate breath of oxygen is ripped from her husband’s lungs. She watches until she hears the cannon blare, confirming his death._

_She remembers nothing more from that night except having a vague awareness of Kane holding her while she cried into his chest._

_She remembers him staring, stunned and disbelieving murmuring softly into nothingness, still staring blankly at the screen, “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”_

_“No,” she had replied, cuttingly, gazing up at him and knowing that he’s thinking the same thing she was in that horrible second after they had both just watched him die, “It wasn’t,” it would have been him, if Jake hadn’t volunteered in his stead, that it should have been him._

_****_

“He volunteered for you,” Abby whispers quietly, looking up at him, the words meant to be some sort of question, asking him if he thinks he has a debt to pay because of that.

“He volunteered for Clarke,” Kane corrects her, very quietly, recalling some of Jake’s last words to her as he does so and startling her because there was no way he could have known them.

“What do you mean?” she asks him quietly, her eyes wide and searching.

Sighing heavily he drags his fingers through his hair and he seems to sag in on himself as he admits in a low, toneless mutter, “There was a plot to spark a rebellion. Jake thought that the Quarter Quell would be the perfect opportunity; people already felt sympathetic towards the victors in play because they had all been reaped before and had been household names in the Capitol since,” he tells her, his eyes darting up to snatch contact with hers before flickering away again as he continues addressing the floor in the same, flat, deadened voice, “Something went wrong, Jake was killed and when that happened the whole plot fell apart.”

After all this time it shouldn’t still hurt and yet it does, and all the more so because she’s spent so long hating him for something that was orchestrated and designed around him.

“But it was never for me, it was all for her, to save Clarke, to spare her from what he went through,” he pauses, looking as drained as she feels then adds in a slightly stronger, more spirited voice, “He failed. I won’t. I’ll bring her home,” he promises her.

“Why didn’t Jake tell me he was planning this?” she asks him quietly.

Kane smiles thinly and squints at her, “If he had told you, what would you have done?”

“I would have stopped him,” she says without thinking, the realisation sinking in as she says it, “Whatever I had to do I would have stopped him, I would have saved him.”

He nods, “That’s why he didn’t tell you. He knew you, he knew what you would do, he knew that he would let you,” he tells her quietly.

She swallows hard, struggling with herself and irritably wipes her eyes with the back of her sleeve before, “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before now?” she whispers softly, gazing up at him, thinking about all the time she’s spent hating him, all the time she’s spent blaming him for Jake’s death because she needed someone to blame and him stepping back and letting Jake take his place and die without a word seemed to be as good a target as any.

A shiver passes through him and he lowers his eyes as they acquire their haunted, distraught cast once more, “Because you were right,” he whispers hoarsely, “Right to be angry, right to blame me, right to hate me. I should have stopped him. I shouldn’t have encouraged him. I should have done what he tried to do in his stead so he didn’t feel he had to volunteer and take my place I- I was responsible-“

“Kane-“ she murmurs, moving in closer to him but before she can think of what to say to comfort him, the door opens behind her and Clarke enters, flanked by two peacekeepers escorting her to say her goodbyes before she’s marched away to the train station.

“Mom!” she cries, running across the room to embrace her.

Abby holds her tightly in her arms, the way she’s done since she was a very small child, her eyes closed, forcing herself to remain strong for her, as she holds her close, wishing that she could keep her safe, that she could keep her here in her arms and never have to let her go again.

Swallowing her emotions she forces herself to say the things she needs to say, “Clarke,” she says, brushing back her hair from her face and looking into her eyes, “Clarke I need you to promise me something, okay?” she says urgently, “Promise me that you’ll listen to Kane-“

“He’s the reason dad’s dead!” Clarke explodes, shooting Kane a furious look over her shoulder but Abby snaps in her fear and her impatience.

“Clarke!” and that gets her daughter’s attention back on her, “He’s the only chance I have to see you again; you listen to him. Promise me.”

“Mom-“

“ _Promise_ me,” she repeats, needing to hear it, knowing that Kane won’t be able to do a thing for her if Clarke refuses to listen to him.

“I promise,” she mumbles finally and Abby breathes a little more freely.  

“I love you,” she whispers, holding her daughter close to her and allowing herself a small, fleeting moment of weakness as she does.

“I love you too,” Clarke chokes out, doing the same.

Breaking apart at the harsh sound of the peacekeeper’s voices behind them, telling her it’s time for Clarke to go now, she straightens up and brushes her daughter’s tears away, furiously fighting back her own, unable to say anything else as they pull Clarke, still looking over her shoulder back at her mother, away towards the train, out through the door that they last took Jake through and she prays that this time she’ll walk back through it.

A long time after Clarke’s left she turns back round to face him and steps towards him, shocking him, and shocking herself too when she reaches down and takes his hand, squeezing it so hard in her own she expects him to wince but he never does.

“Bring her home,” she whispers to him, her eyes boring into his, desperate to find some comfort or reassurance there, and, to her slight surprise, she does.

He nods but doesn’t speak then turns to follow Clarke out of the room and onto the train but she reaches out and catches his arm before he’s moved too far away from her and holds him back, “And Marcus?” she murmurs softly, her eyes never leaving his, “Make sure you come home with her.”

His expression is hard to read, he looks both taken aback and touched by her words but finally, after she’s let her hand trail down his forearm and take his hand again he dips his head in acknowledgement and murmurs softly, “I promise,” before he turns and follows her daughter out of the room, leaving her standing there alone, wondering when she’ll see him again.

****

 


	4. Reaching For You From The Endless Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Softening and balancing; saving each other: Marvel/Superhero AU: Abby has prophetic dreams that allow her to share the thoughts and feelings of another person and experience an event in their life that has not yet happened yet but soon will. After her failure to prevent her husband's death her nights have been an endless torment of his death over and over again until a new vision intrudes and breaks the pattern to warn her of another person in peril. Reluctant to enter into the world of superheroes once more after her failure, she confides in her daughter, Clarke, who encourages her to help the man in her dreams.

Part 4 – Reaching For You From The Endless Dream

_Pain radiates through her, the same agonizing, inescapable pain that she comes to expect each night but that never gets any easier to bear or face or endure. It radiates through her from a point in her chest just above her heart, like a rock striking a glass window, the cracks fanning out from the point of impact the pain rips through her body-_

_Darkness smothers me like a shroud. A heavy, oppressive darkness, the kind that might come from having someone hold their hand hard over my eyes, pressing so hard that it’s painful-_

She shifts and tenses in her sleep, her body twisting itself out of shape as the unexpected sensation intrudes upon the familiar nightmare-

_Blood trickles from the corner of her mouth, warm and wet and shockingly scarlet as it falls to the ground around her, spattering it with crimson rain-_

_Cold shivers through me, tracing the arc of my spine and shooting along it, like a frozen blade raking across the surface of my bones-_

_She can hear the jarring sound of her own voice screaming in horrified anguish in the distance-_

_A sense of weight and pressure bearing down upon me from above makes me close her eyes, even though I can’t see a thing but blackness around me anyway, and turn my head slightly, as though to look away from it. As I do I become acutely aware for the first time of the rough stone I’m being pressed in to and of the pain from my right leg that’s pinned and trapped-_

_Looking down slowly, as though in a dream, she sees the hole that’s been punched through her chest, sees the clothes her husband left the house in that morning soaked through with hot blood. A profound sense of cold begins to leech the life from her body-_

_I begins to struggle then, crying out wordlessly, my throat raw and torn, thrashing back and forth with a desperate, almost inhuman strength until the pain overcomes me and I collapse, trembling violently. Panting, my eyes screwed tightly as I try and ignore the fading echo of agony that still ghosts through me, I girt my teeth and take a deep breath, bracing myself. I’m about to start trying to pull herself free again when I hear something that makes me freeze, not even daring to breathe for a moment-_

_Swaying on the spot her vision blurs and in the distance she can hear running footsteps pounding against the concrete pavement as someone dashes to meet her, terrified, trying to reach her before it’s too late. But it’s already too late-_

_The unmistakable clack and clatter of a small rock bouncing repeatedly over larger ones as it makes its way towards my reaches my ears. The sound echoes strangely and comes to me from a distance, as though I’m lying pinned at the bottom of a deep well-_

_She was warned. She was told. She knew that this was coming yet it still feels a shock, still feels unreal. She wonders if it was worth it. She’s never going to see them again, the people that she loves, the one she married and the child they had together. Their faces are already fading, even as she does-_

_Fear shivers through me then, sharper and icier than the cold that still afflicts me. Rubble shifts above me and I know a moment of pure terror, fearing that everything is going to suddenly collapse down upon ,me and there’s nothing I can do, nowhere I can go, no way to avoid or escape it-_

_People around her are yelling indistinctly but she can no longer make out their words. Only one. One voice in the distance coming closer and closer and closer, screaming “Jake! “ with ever mounting terror. She feels her heart clench, she wants to cry out, to tell her to go home, not to look, not to see, not to go through this, not for their last memories of each other to be this-_

_A thin finger of light falls suddenly across my face, making me screw up my eyes against it, as some of the larger blocks above me move ever so slightly. My heart pounds in my throat as they do and I clench my fists at my sides. Dust spirals through the air, catching in my throat and in my lungs making me cough every time I breathe but now I’m scared of that, scared that the movement, that the very sound, might be too much, scared that it might all come down on top of me at once, without warning, without hope of escape-_

_“Abby,” she whispers, in his voice, the voice that whispers that to her each night before sleeping, the voice that has whispered I love you so many times but never will again-_

_“Help,” I whispers hopelessly into the dark and the quiet, my voice hoarse and low and rough and almost alien to me-_

_Someone is shouting, screaming, warm hands grasp at her and try to pull her back to them, “Jake!” the voice, her voice, cries, shaking her with the brutal strength of terror, “Jake, no, Jake! Jake look at me, look at me, Jake!” as she sinks to her knees, the last breath leaving her lips-_

_A single tear rolling silently from the corner of my eye, carving a path through the dust and grime and blood that coats my cheeks and I close my eyes and whisper once again, “Help me,” an instant before the blocks above me shift again. I have a split second sense of them all descending down upon her at once and then-_

She wakes, screaming.

Thrashing around in her bed her senses confused and assaulted by a myriad of different feelings and impressions all coming to her at once. The two visions mingling into one, shifting haltingly and confusingly between the two, like a television screen with a glitch, shifting from one image to the next without warning or explanation.

But it’s the second dream, the newer one that had blended with the old, well worn scenes and feelings that still holds her attention now. The dark and the cold, the fear lancing through her heart with every beat, the pressure of the rubble bearing down upon her, the isolation, the pain, the choking dust, the rough stone against her skin all gone and everything now feels wrong and utterly at odds with what she just experienced.

The surface beneath her is soft and gentle, cradling her body instead of forcing it out of shape and scraping her skin away every time she dares to move. A sense of safety and security surrounds her like the warm embrace of a lover and the air is clear, tinged with a light fragrance that reminds her of home.

The jarring, discordant differences between the two scenes confuses her and makes her feel ill for a moment and she presses the heels of her hands hard into her eyes, trying to wrench herself back into herself, unable to remember a vision being that strong in such a long time.  

“Mom!” Clarke’s voice and the sudden warm pressure of her hand against her knee brings her back to her surroundings more acutely and effectively than anything else could have done.

Tentatively she allows her eyes to blink open and though she expects to see the crushing darkness and rough stones surrounding her, she accepts the sight of her daughter’s face, hair tousled from sleep, face pale, concern radiating from her eyes, without the questions she had about everything else when she first woke.

“It’s okay, I’m okay,” she tries to reassure her, her voice hoarse, her words slurred with tiredness and confusion, still able to feel bile rising in the back of her throat as memories of the dream continue to wash over her, a relentless tide against a troubled shore.

Clarke perches herself on the bed beside her mother and hands her a glass of water from the bedside table. Abby accepts it gratefully and sips at it, closing her eyes again and leaning back against her pillows.

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” she murmurs, opening her eyes and looking up apologetically at her daughter.

Clarke just shakes her head, “It’s alright,” she assures her, then adds in a much more serious tone, “It’s been a while since you have though,” she squeezes her hand gently in an effort to take some of the sting out of her next, soft question, “Was it dad?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head and trying to recall the vision that’s already beginning to slip away from her, without ever being sure if she wants to remember it, “Or...Not exactly,” Clarke screws up her face in confusion at this and Abby can’t blame her. She tries to explain it better, “It started out the same, the way the dreams about your father always went but then it changed it...There was something different there, _someone_ different I...” she shakes her head, not sure what else to say.

Clarke is looking at her with a strange look on her face and for just a moment, Abby sees her husband looking out at her from behind her daughter’s eyes more clearly than she ever has before, “Your powers are coming back?” she asks quietly, gazing up at her.

A year ago, Jake died. A year ago she dreamt of Jake dying. A year ago she had tried to warn him, to tell him what she had seen, to tell him what would happen if he tried to play the hero again. He hadn’t listened. Or rather, he had listened, he had believed her, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself from doing what he felt was the right thing, no matter the cost. And the cost had been his life.

Ever since then, Abby’s prophetic dreams had been stuck, like a broken record that keeps glitching and jumping back constantly, never able to advance any further forward and for the last year, all her dreams had shown her had been her husband’s death, over and over and over again, as though taunting her, punishing her for having seen and not having stopped.

“Or it was just a nightmare,” Abby says quietly, shaking her head.

Clarke’s quiet for a long moment then she say, softly but firmly, watching her mother closely, “You don’t think it was, do you?”

“No,” Abby finds herself admitting. The vision, she’s sure it was a vision, was too clear and too obvious and she felt it too much for it to have been an ordinary nightmare. She had come to tell the difference between dreams and reality a long time ago, and not even a year without any new visions can have dulled that ability.

Before Clarke can question her further about the vision and  what it might mean for the return of her powers and what she’s going to do next, she pushes herself hastily out of bed and says, “I have to go honey, I’m going to be late for work.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go,” her daughter says, looking at her with concern in her eyes, “You still look really pale.”

She smiles wanly and swoops down to gently kiss her forehead as she says, “I’ll be fine, I just need a little fresh air.”

She gets showered, dressed and forces down some breakfast, at Clarke’s insistence, as quickly as possible and decides to walk to walk to try and give her a chance to work off some of the tense, nervous energy that’s still burning through her and to give her the time to straighten herself out and fix herself before she arrives at the hospital and is tasked with fixing other people and their problems.

The vision that woke her with such violence earlier still worries her and preys on her mind. Not only what she saw, though that was disturbing enough, sharing the feelings and fears that another human being, a total stranger, is going to have to go through at some time in the future was always a testing experience but having been without the ability for so long she was even more sensitive to it this time than she ever remembers being before. At least, she assumes it’s the absence that’s causing the sharpness and intensity.

She doesn’t really know. And she doesn’t know why her visions have suddenly returned to her after an entire year without them. She doesn’t know what it was about that vision, about that person and their future that should matter so much to her that it managed to force its way through her grief and anger and guilt over Jake. She doesn’t know what it means that her powers are apparently coming back now, why they’ve come back at all, if there was something she did that made them come back she just doesn’t know.

Throughout her life one of the few things that’s remained absolutely constant about her and her personality has been her hatred of not knowing anything. Ignorance about any subject was never something she took kindly too, whether personally, academically or professionally. She likes knowing where she stands, she hates feeling as though she’s at sea without the means of locating land again, like she’s out of control and unsure about what’s going on.

Right now that’s all she feels. Adrift, isolated, scared even. The visions were never exactly pleasant, they were always intense, sometimes terrifying, especially before she understood what they meant. Once she had though she had seen them too much as an opportunity to be afraid of them, she had tried to recall every single detail, had even forced herself to fall asleep again so she could relive them to try and identify something within them that would help the subject of the dreams. She had used them to help people, she _had_ helped people, she had revelled in her gift.

Until Jake’s death. She had seen it, like all the others, and she still couldn’t think of a worse fate in this world than being forced to live through the death of someone she loved. Over and over and over again she had seen it, she had felt it, she had died in his body again and again. So that when it had actually happened, when he had died, she had known every thought that had entered his head, every word that had struggled to form on his blood stained lips, every memory that had burned through him in the seconds before he had succumbed to his injuries. And she had despised it, she had despised the curse she had been born with and what it had done to her, what it had forced her to survive.

This now is the first vision she’s had since Jake and she hates it, she rebels against it. She doesn’t want it anymore. She doesn’t want to have to feel someone else’s dying moments over and over again and feel that compulsion to try and change their fate, to save the damned and the dead at the cost of her own blood and sweat and tears. She doesn’t want to have to endure this visions again and again. Not now that she knows the cost of failure. Not now that she understands that sometimes there’s nothing she can do, sometimes death claims his victims whatever she does to stop him. 

Isn’t it enough that she’s a surgeon? That she saves the lives of the people who come through her doors bleeding and scared? The loss of a patient is devastating, and always has been. But losing someone when she feels like she knows them intimately, when she’s had their fear coursing through her own system, when she’s tasted their last desperate breath on her lips, when she’s felt their emotions and listened to their thoughts and knows exactly what it is for them to die is torture, it’s too much. She knows if she has to do that again, if she’s forced to go through that again, she doesn’t think she can.

She doesn’t want to. She wants them to stop. She wants to be able to forget what she saw, what she felt. She wants to be able to ignore the desperate calls of the buried man. She wants to be able to move on. She wants to have this gift, this curse, removed from her. She wants to exist with only her own pain and her own grief and her own fear because that’s enough, that’s more than enough for any one person to have to go through.

And so she decides that she won’t listen, she won’t feel, she’ll shut it out, she’ll shut him out and she’ll try and move on and pretend that none of this ever happened.

*****

_The cold sinks in to my lungs. Every breath burns as though someone has filled them with gasoline and each breath pumps in the oxygen required for it to combust and consume me from the inside. The dust still tickles my throat and nips at his eyes, making them water._

_I’m dying. I know that now. Slowly, agonizingly, uncertainly, but I’m dying. I’m trapped underground and I’m dying. Thinking it over and over again I wait for it to sink in, wait for it to make sense, wait for it to properly hit me but it doesn’t. It’s too much to comprehend. The words feel so empty, so false, so distant. But they’re not distant._

_I’m dying, I repeat once more and this time, something like fear shivers through my nerves and they begin to tremble, ever so faintly, like a single strand of a cobweb being plucked, the vibrations running through until they reach me and make me feel something at last._

_I’m dying. Alone. Completely and utterly alone. Isolated by the tonnes and tonnes of concrete that are balanced on a knife’s edge above me, just waiting to fall, waiting to crush me, waiting to kill me, taunting me with every second that they choose not to._

_I never thought that I was afraid of dying. I thought that I had made her peace with it. I thought that it would be okay. When my time came I thought I would be able to accept it quietly and calmly. I had  tried to be logical and pragmatic, I had  told myself  that it came to everyone, that it was natural, that it was something unavoidable and inevitable and so there was no point in fearing it, no point in being afraid of something that would happen whether I was scared or not._

_But I’m scared now. I’m terrified now. Now that I’m facing it._

_I’m alone, surrounded by cold and darkness and I’m dying. Every sense I have is telling me so, I can feel it burning through my body, I can taste it on the shallow breaths I’m managing to draw into my heaving chest, I can see it in the grim blackness that surrounds me and I’m afraid._

_My heart hammers so hard and fast I’m not sure what its aim is; to fulfil the number of beats it would have had in it if I hadn’t gotten myself trapped in a collapsing building and died here like a canary in the depths of a coal mine, or if it’s trying to escape the confines of my doomed, ruined chest. Either way, it’s banging against my ribs so fiercely that it’s painful._

_I close my eyes, as though by doing so I can pretend to be somewhere else so completely that I can fool myself into thinking that I’m okay, that I’m not petrified._

_My whole body is trembling and I whisper a prayer that my mother taught me years ago. I haven’t thought about it in years, haven’t thought about that part of me, the part that went to Church with my mother whenever she asked, the part that sang the hymns as best I could, the part that knew every prayer by heart and used to recite them to see my mother smile._

_It all comes back to me now and I realise with an odd mixture of mounting fear and something that might have been relief that I might see her again soon. But I don’t think I want to. I don’t think I’m ready. Not now. Not yet._

_Or maybe, worse still, all there will be is more of this blackness and more of this cold and nothing else. Maybe I’ll be trapped in a place like this forever with nothing and with no-one, with nothing to see, nothing to do, no-one to speak to, utterly alone._

_I’ve always been something of a loner. My mother used to worry about it when I was younger. But it never really bothered me, it was just the way that I was, I tried to explain to her but she never really understood, she had always needed people about her, in a way I never did._

_There were a few select people that I got on with, and got on well with that I would spend some time with and talk to but on the whole, if I was just left to his own devices, I was generally happy with that. Now though, like the fear of death I never thought existed in me, the prospect terrifies me._

_“Please,” I whisper into the silence, into the emptiness that envelopes me, into the cold that settles deep into my chest telling me it’s nearly over, “Help,” I breathe, the word choking and catching, a single tear sliding from my cheek onto the rough stone floor beneath me, “Help me,” I beg of someone, of everyone, of no-one, “Abby.”_

She jerks awake again, breathing hard, her chest heaving just as his had done in the dream, her heart hammering wildly as she struggles to compose herself. Never in all the years she’s been having these visions has anyone ever mentioned her name. Except Jake. But he was a special case. He knew her, was married to her, she was present when he died. But this man, this man she doesn’t recognise, this man she doesn’t know.

But stronger and stronger with every passing second as she sits here now, thinking about what she’s just seen, she feels an ever deeper connection with this man. And he knew her name. He whispered her name. She’s sure he did. But how...How...

A shudder runs through her and she buries her face in her hands, trying to calm herself, trying to compose herself. This vision was so much stronger and clearer than the first that had mingled so painfully with her regular nightmare about Jake’s death but it’s stronger and clearer than any vision she can remember having in the past as well.

There’s something different about this one. There’s something different about that man. There’s a sense of connection there. She feels as though she knows him, though she’s quite sure that she doesn’t. But she feels... _something_ for him, something that she shouldn’t, something that confuses her and makes keeping the promise she made to herself the other day about not getting involved, not meddling, about just trying to forget so much more difficult.

For the rest of the day she finds it utterly impossible to stop his voice echoing in her head, whispering her name over and over, making her jump so badly that she takes herself home from work early, not trusting herself to perform surgeries or even consultations while she can’t stop her hands from shaking with the memory of a stranger’s approaching death that’s consuming her waking moments as well as her sleeping ones.

Clarke picks up on the tension that’s tying her in knots over dinner and asks quietly, “Did you dream about him again? The man?”

Glancing up from the food she’s barely touched, having played with it much more than she’s eaten it, she meets her daughter’s eyes and finds herself nodding wordlessly then sighing and dragging her fingers through her hair, “It was worse this time,” she says quietly, trying not to visibly tremble as she says it, “I’d forgotten...Forgotten what it felt like to go through all of that,” she can’t suppress the shudder that comes then.

“What are you going to do about it?” Clarke asks her in an even, measured tone.

“Honestly?” she says softly, “I don’t know,” knowing that it’s true, that she has no idea what she’s going to do, but privately knowing what she wants to do, and all she wants to do is forget that she ever saw that man, forget the strange bond she feels between them, forget the danger, forget his fear, forget the way her name sounded on his tongue. But she knows in her heart that she won’t be able to.

****

_Every breath I drag into my lungs aches as though the air is tinged with napalm. Yet I force them all the same. While it hurts I know I’m still alive. While I struggle for breath I know that some part of me still fights, still rebels, still exists for the faint, empty miracle that might bring someone to my aid to pull me out of here before it’s too late._

_I don’t really believe that though. But there’s just enough amount of stubborn spite left in me to keep me breathing until the end, to keep me alive, to fight until there’s nothing left of me, until my lungs have more dust and rubble and filth in them than air, until my heart has rusted over and can no longer beat, until my thoughts no longer come, they simply die with me, a thousand words unspoken, a thousand things undone and  all of them becoming achingly clear to me in these last few moments here on Earth._

_When I was younger I played that game with my friends, even with my lover once or twice, where we asked one another ‘if you only had an hour left to live, what would you do?’. I told my friends that I would read my favourite book one last time, read as much of it as I possibly could before the end. I told them I would eat my favourite food one last time and savour every bite. I told my lover that I would spend the time with him, kissing him, touching him, loving him, committing every inch of his body to memory before it was taken from me._

_I told none of them that I would spend it in pain and in terror. But if this life has taught me anything it’s that we rarely get what we want, what we dream of, what we desire. We get what we make out of nothing with our bare hands, we get what we fight for, we get what we take, we get what we deserve, in the end. Maybe this is what I deserve, maybe this is my penance, maybe this is the way the universe is asking me to answer for my sins._

_I shudder violently, the cold surrounding me now penetrating me, filling up my bones until my whole body feels as though it’s carved from ice, as though it’s **being**_ _carved from ice right now, like someone is taking a knife and slowly, agonizingly, drawing out every line of me._

_I can’t suppress the fear that feels by now like a constant companion. I’m not going to die with the words of my favourite book imprinted upon my eyes, nor with the taste of my favourite food on my tongue, nor with a lover’s kiss upon my lips, I’m going to die with fear gnawing at every inch of me, demanding that I fight, demanding that I struggle, demanding that I survive when I can’t, when I’m trapped, when I’m in pain and scared and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it._

_I close my eyes and whisper another of my mother’s prayers, to her, to me, to whoever may be listening. And then I have the strangest sense that someone is. I have the strangest sense that someone is watching me, listening to me, here for me._

_“Help,” I croak out desperately, not sure if it’s real or if it’s a hallucination or if it’s just a dream, not caring either way, it’s a hope, and that’s something that I desperately need._

_Claustrophobia begins to set in. Slowly at first, so faintly I almost don’t notice it. But then the blocks hovering above me are sinking down to meet me and fear is blossoming like a monster inside my chest being born, ripping past the bounds of my ribcage and tearing me apart as it pulls itself free._

_I can barely breathe now and it’s more than the air thinning and becoming clogged with dust, it’s terror. My chest rises and falls like the pistons on a racing steam engine but I never seem to be able to get enough air into my lungs to sustain me. My vision is starting to blur and fade and I want to scream I want to cry, I want to beg for help but I don’t know who to beg or how or if they would hear me or if they would even care._

_My heart flutters like it belongs in the chest of a dying bird and I have a good idea of how a canary stuffed at the bottom of a coal mine would feel. Down in the dark and the heat, the thin air rising all around it. And it never volunteered for this. It never asked for it. It was just forced upon it without warning and that’s how I feel stuck down here in the dark._

_“Help me,” I whisper again, eyes closing, unable to stop the tear that slides down my cheek or the shivers that follow, “Please help me, someone, please, please, please help me,” unbidden, from nowhere, as though another person is speaking with my voice, I whisper the name, “Abby,” and feel a sudden shock of recognition and connection that almost manages to distract me from my situation before it returns with the violence of a raging wildfire and I find myself shaking and pleading with the silence once more, “Help me, help me, help me...” praying that someone will hear, that someone will come, that someone will help._

The sound of Clarke’s feet hurrying towards her tells her that she must have cried out again, loudly enough to wake her daughter in the next room.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she croaks before Clarke even says a word, pitching forwards and pressing her hands into her eyes, trying to stop herself from shaking and reliving the more harrowing parts of the vision.

“It’s okay, mom,” she says quietly, laying a hand on her back and giving it a soft rub. Forcing herself to sit up she drags her fingers back through her hair, meeting Clarke’s eyes when she asks softly, “The man again?”

She nods then finds herself confessing tremulously, without quite knowing why, “I feel like...Like I owe him something. I feel like he’s important to me. I feel like...Like there’s some sort of connection between us. But I have no idea who he is, I don’t know him, I’ve never met him before, I’ve never even _seen_ him before but...” she trails off, shaking her head, unable to make any sense of this, sure that none of her visions have ever affected her this way in the past, not knowing why she should feel this way about a perfect stranger.  

Clarke is quiet for a long moment then she says, firmly and decisively, as though the matter has already been settled, “You have to help him.”

“I can’t,” Abby snaps, more harshly than she had meant to and forces her voice to soften as she explains, “I can’t. I said I was done with that. I meant it,” she can see that Clarke isn’t convinced by this and forces herself to add in a rush, “Ever since your father di-“ then breaks off, unable to say it aloud sometimes, even now.

Clarke’s face hardens for a moment then settles again and she reaches out and gently takes her mother’s hand, her voice quiet but sure and determined when she says, “It’s been over a year, mom. You can say it in front of me.”

“Except I can’t,” she bursts out hopelessly.

She feels a surge of violent energy pulsing through her that makes it torture to just sit here meekly and talk when she wants to do things, she wants to throw things, she wants to tear at them with her bare hands just to try and stop herself feeling this way, she wants to rage and scream because it’s not fair, not fair that this should be put on her again, not fair that she should be made to suffer through this again and again not fair that after everything this world has torn from her it still expects her to give all of herself back.

“I can’t because it still hurts too much,” she tells her daughter in anguish. The two of them had only grown closer after Jake’s death and she’s older now, their relationship dynamic had changed, slowly evolving from mother and daughter to something more like friends. It’s been one of the few things that’s pulled the two of them through everything that’s happened.

“I failed,” she whispers into her hands, “I failed him. I couldn’t save him, I _didn’t_ save him,” she says, all of the emotions, the grief and the guilt that’s been dragged back up over the last few days because of these new visions is pouring out of her like a river bursting its banks or the cork bursting from a bottle, unable to contain the amount of pressure that’s been welling up inside it, “I knew what would happen, I knew when. I’d seen it over and over and over again and I...” something seems to collapse inside her as she breathes, “He still died,” her whole body trembles at the admission, racked by a pain she thought she had outgrown, “I couldn’t make him listen. I couldn’t make him stop and he...”

“He made his choice,” Clarke says, so softly that if they hadn’t been sitting so close to each other on the bed she might have missed it.

“And we’ve had to live with it,” Abby says, raising her head to look into her daughter’s eyes; her father’s eyes.

“That doesn’t mean you give up,” Clarke says sharply, again reminding her more of Jake now than she ever has done before, “That man in your dreams, he’s going to die too, just like dad.”

“And what if I can’t change that?” Abby demands, knowing that this simple sentence does nothing to convey the terror she feels over that prospect.

The way she’s been so torn ever since these visions started, hating them, despising them, wishing they would stop but at the same time being terrified that they will because then that means that he’s dead, and all she can do now is watch and feel over and over again, that she’s forced to experience the ends of these people’s lives and never be able to do anything about it, to know that she can never do anything about it, condemned to be a helpless witness to suffering and pain.

“What if you can?” Clarke demands even more fiercely still, “You have to try.”

A soft, sad smile tugs at Abby’s lips then as she looks up at her daughter. Reaching out she gently cups her cheek in her hand and tells her quietly, “Sometimes you remind me so much of your father,” Clarke smiles back in return at this.

“He would want you to try too,” her daughter says relentlessly and Abby can’t stop herself from smiling even more broadly still.

“I know,” she agrees, knowing that it was true, knowing that Jake used to sit up at night with her, whatever time she woke up, and help him sort through her visions, picking out hints and clues with her, doing whatever he could to identify the subject of her dreams and work out the best way to help them. In the end, it was that trait that got him killed.

“You never could argue with both of us,” Clarke says quietly, the hint of a smile tugging at her lips and Abby can’t help but share it, knowing that she’s right, that whenever the two of them threw their lots in together to oppose her whenever she stated it was too late to sit up and finish the movie, or that the cake would keep until tomorrow, they didn’t have to eat it all now, she had inevitably been won over by their combined puppy dog eyes.

“No,” she agrees, a little shakily, “No I couldn’t.”  

“So does that mean you’ll do it? You’ll try and help him?” Clarke asks then adds quietly, “For dad?”

When Jake had died she had thought that it would only be down to her to decide what was best with her visions. She hadn’t been betting on her daughter guilt-tripping her into saving a man she didn’t know any more than she did on the basis of it being what her father would have wanted. She wonders, briefly, if maybe there isn’t more to this than she first thought. Between her daughter’s insistence, her knowledge that Jake would have insisted too, and her strange connection with the man in her dreams, it seems as though the decisions are being made for her by something greater than she is.

Finally, she finds herself nodding slowly and agreeing, in a slightly tremulous voice, “I’ll try.”

****

“Take two of these per day, one with breakfast when you wake up, one with dinner before you go to sleep alright?” she instructs clearly, and her patient accepts the antibiotics prescription, thanks her, and shuffles slowly out of her consult room.

Sinking down onto the stool in front of her computer she begins typing up his report, trying to ignore the insistent tug of her brain as it attempts to make her think of the man in her dreams. Marcus. It keeps insisting softly. His name is Marcus.

Rolling her shoulders and trying to work out the knot that’s formed between them she finally submits the report, after having had to rewrite almost every sentence several times over due to errors and decides that she needs a break and some intravenous coffee to wake her up and help push her through the last few hours of her shift, though she supposes the thin, largely flavourless swill that the machine in the staff room spits out will have to do.

As she wanders through the front lobby, nodding at various nurses and doctors as she passes the ground shakes suddenly, as though from an earthquake and several people scream loudly, some running away from the horrible screeching, roaring sounds coming from nearby, others running towards it to see what’s happened.

After a moment’s hesitation in which some instinct twists deep in her gut, the kind that she’s learned to trust over the years, she joins those heading outside to see what the source of all the commotion is.

 It becomes immediately apparent the moment she gets outside. The scene unfolding around her looks like something from a disaster movie. The building to the left of the hospital has collapsed, crumbling in on itself, pitching wildly as though in a high wind, large chunks of rubble and debris still falling from above like giant, lethal grenades, exploding against the concrete pavement on the street below.

Sirens blare in the distance and already an emergency team from the hospital is scrambling behind her to try and assist those that have been injured. Chaos reigns chief amongst the crowds of screaming, running, terrified people as crowds shove forwards, partners scream for their lovers, parents for their children, brothers for sisters, the same cry howled in anguish from a thousand throats as they try to locate their families.

Dust is thick in the air around the collapsing building and as she walks nearer, as though in a trance, barely aware of her actions, feeling as though someone is making her decisions for her, moving her legs where they want them to be, like a marionette being jerked every closer to the tragedy by the invisible strings of fate. Coughing and choking, she covers her mouth with her arm and stares up at the building.  

Grabbing someone nearby she demands to know what happens and is told that there was some sort of an explosion that triggered a fire, everyone evacuated before the building collapsed though. As she releases the young man’s arm and he staggers off however, her vision blurs and the scene around her dissolves and reforms, for the briefest collection of heartbeats only, and presents her with another scene.

  _Heart hammering. Sweat beading the skin. Pain erupting from nowhere, bursting like fireworks through screaming nerves. Terror at being trapped. Yelling, pounding fists against stone, howling, begging someone to hear, to know, to understand._

She sways violently on the spot, brought back to herself by the warm hand of a helpful stranger being pressed against her shoulder, “Ma’am are you alright?” the rather worried voice enquires of her.

“Yes,” she finds herself saying, trying to wave away her would be rescuer, “Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”

“You should come away,” the man insists to her, trying to draw her back, “It’s not safe this close, the building is still unstable.”

“I will, yes, you’re right,” Abby agrees and allows herself to be led away from the source of the tragedy, shaking off the kindly man as soon as she can, tying herself in knots over the vision that had so unsettled her in the first place.

She understands what happened of course, she’s witnessed that scene over and over again in her sleep for the past few days, the sensations and the intimate thoughts are known to her now but never before has she had flashes of her visions outside of dreams. She’s had sensations, gut feelings and inclinations that draw her instinctively to the subject she’s seeking to help but never proper visions interrupting her.

It takes her a moment then to recover from the sudden intrusion of Marcus’ thoughts and feelings upon herself. But that coupled with the pull she’s been feeling all day that has now become so strong it’s as though someone has fitted an invisible hook somewhere near her navel, jerking her irresistibly towards the man from her dreams.

She thinks of Jake, of his loss, of her failure, and then she thinks of her daughter, of her fierceness, of her courage, of her strength, of her insistence that she should act, that she should help, that she should do something to save him and, gritting her teeth, closing her eyes and clenching her fists at her sides, able to detect the faint undercurrent of Marcus’ own terror and pain and rumbling beneath her own turbulent emotions and feelings, she thinks of her promise to Clarke and Marcus’ faint, desperate “help me,” and heads determinedly towards the crumbling building in front of her.

For the first time since Jake’s death she allows herself to properly feel her ability, letting it flood through her, letting Marcus’ thoughts and surroundings guide her actions as she slips into the building, knowing that it’s not empty, that there’s someone alive in there, someone that she has to save.

Half on instinct and half on promptings and urgings from her connection with Marcus she makes her way slowly and cautiously through the building, crawling through cramped tunnels, scraping the exposed skin on her hands and bare arms and trying not to notice it as she forces her way in deeper and deeper through the newly formed labyrinth of collapsed corridors, rooms and walls, forming a kind of rough, claustrophobic maze.

After a while, there’s no light from outside to guide her way and she’s forced to root around in the pockets of her scrubs before pulling out her phone and using the flashlight on it to help guide her on. The air is becoming thinner and thinner the further she goes in, oxygen diluted by dust and her own fear but she knows that she’s close now, she can feel it, she can sense him nearby and she forces herself to swallow her fear and keep going, determined to find him now, to save him, to do whatever she has to do.

Finally, after scrambling through a tunnel so narrow it forced her to bend double and crawl along on her hands and knees, she finds herself in a more open space and her heart pounds in time with the frantic rhythm of his that she remembers from her dreams and, raising the phone in front of her, the beam of the torch enters the room and a thin finger of light passes over his face at last.

“Marcus,” she finds herself breathing his name as she scrambles out of the tunnel and into the space in front of her, struggling to move quickly over the rough, uneven footing below her.

“Marcus,” she calls again, when he doesn’t respond to her first attempt to rouse him but he remains silent and motionless and she feels her heart jam in her throat, making it difficult to breathe or speak.

 _Please don’t be dead,_ she thinks frantically as she approaches him and places a hand on his shoulder, feeling it cold and still, _please don’t be dead, please don’t let me be too late, please, please don’t be dead, not again, not again, please._

“Wake up,” she insists, all thoughts of her medical expertise and experience utterly deserting her as she reduces herself to pure panic, gripping his shoulder more tightly and shaking it, “Marcus wake up, you have to wake up,” she tells him, her voice echoing in the confined, silent space, “Wake up-“

He does and she gasps in shock and surprise, a feeling that strengthens when he reaches out and grabs her hand in his, his nails scrabbling against her palm in his desperation. She squeezes back as tightly as she can, nodding and trying to reassure him as his lips mouth soundlessly and feebly.

“It’s okay,” she tries to assure him, holding his hand very tightly, drawing it in closer to her chest on instinct so he can feel the warmth coming from her, “You’re going to be okay now, I’m here, I’m not going to leave you down here, I’m going to get you out, it’s all going to be okay,” she tries to assure him.

“Abby,” he whispers and a faint chill shivers along her spine at the sound of her name, a name he shouldn’t know because they’re strangers to one another but somehow he does, somehow he knows, somehow he’s aware of the connection that her ability forges between them in a way that no-one ever has been before.

As this realisation strikes her she feels something pulse between them, an understanding, a bond, a connection, something that she’s never felt before, something stronger than her ability, stronger than any attachment she’s ever felt to another person before and as she looks down at him and looks into his eyes she knows that this is something that runs deeper than her ability, something that’s in their blood, in their skin, in their hearts, in their very souls because he feels it too she knows.

He’s staring at her as though he’s never seen another person before, as though he’s spent his whole life drowning and she’s the first taste of sweet air upon his tongue, the first glimpse of what feeling alive truly means, the first breath of oxygen pressed into his lungs and she feels the same way as she looks down at him, utterly unprepared for this, utterly unsure of how to react it, unsure of anything except his hand gripped tightly in her own that she doesn’t seem able to let go of.

The moment stretches and solidifies between them and she can’t let go of his hand and she can’t stop looking into his eyes, deep and dark, fathomless in the gloom, seemingly interminable and eternal, as though they contain whole universes and lifetimes beyond counting or understanding and she can’t help herself from getting lost in them. Wonder engulfs her and she becomes aware of things, of feelings, of emotions stirring in her that she’s been numb to since Jake’s death that he’s now woken in her as nothing and no-one else could and she has no idea what’s happening, no idea what’s going on, no idea how to explain what she feels for this man before her but she knows that there’s something here, a connection that’s more than anything she’s ever experienced that’s going to bind her to him for the rest of her life.

After what feels an eternity locked in that moment together he breaks the silence, reaching up with the hand she’s not clinging on to for dear life and softly, tentatively, as though he’s afraid that she’ll crumble away into nothingness at his slightest touch, he brushes her cheek with the tips of his fingers and whispers hoarsely in the voice she’s come to know well over the past few nights in her dreams, “Thank you.”

She nods and opens her mouth to say words that she doesn’t have but before she can think of any he shudders and falls unconscious once more. Taking a deep breath she allows instinct and training to sweep over her once more and she hurries into action, taking stock of his wounds and preparing him to be taken out of her, binding up the wound on his leg as best she can given the conditions and winding a tight tourniquet around it before, with one last glance, hating to leave him, even for a moment, even for his own benefit, even though she must, hurrying back up the way she had come to find help to get him out of here.

She doesn’t know what happened to her, what the connection she feels between herself and Marcus is but she knows that it’s something. She knows that the dreams came to her again because of him, so that she could save him. She knows that there’s something between the two of them, something beyond anything she’s ever encountered or experienced, even in this world where people can be born with the same strange, unbelievable gifts that she has and she knows that the contact she just had with him, the bond that she felt spring between them when she touched him, when he looks into her eyes, has already begun changing her in shaping her in ways she doesn’t understand and can’t imagine. It’s unlocked something that was within her and she knows that her fate is bound so closely to that of Marcus Kane’s that she would move Heaven and Earth for just another minute spent with him and that nothing will be the same for either of them from here on out.

****

 


	5. Constant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reclusive, genius, billionaire Raven Reyes builds an AI surveillance machine and recruits the help of ex-special ops veteran Marcus Kane to help investigate the 'numbers' her machine flags as a warning that they're about to be the victim, or the perpetrator, of a violent crime. Abby Griffin's number comes up and Marcus feels a powerful pull towards a woman he's sure he's never met and a desire to protect her from the deadly fate someone has lined up for her.

Part 5 – Constant  

Looking up from the book with which he’d been trying to distract himself at the loud sound of his phone ringtone, something that varies greatly with Raven’s mood and sense of humour of the week and is today rather reserved and simple (which it never is when it starts blaring in public; something he suspects is deliberate) he slides himself away from his desk and pads over to where it’s charging.

“Hi Kane,” comes the almost indecently loud at this time in the morning voice on the other end of the line, “Did I wake you?” she wants to know.

Leaning back against the cabinet he allows a faint, rare smile to tug across his lips then answers smoothly, “Come on Raven, that would imply I slept.”

“And we both know you don’t do that,” she agrees, playing along immediately, “Very true.”

Smiling a little more broadly he says, “So, we have a new number I take it?”

The reply that comes back is incredibly mock offended, “Maybe I just wanted to call you to have a nice friendly chat, Kane? Maybe I need help and advice and came to you in desperate need,” he snorts with laughter at that and she drops the exaggerated pretence, “Yes, Sherlock, we do have a new number, get your ass over here, I want to explain.”

“Can’t you get your machine to spit out numbers at a more convenient time?” he teases, already looking for his keys, “I might have had plans,” it’s Raven’s turn to snort with derisive laughter this time and he doesn’t take it personally as he says, “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

He arrives at the Library in time to see Raven pinning a picture of their new number onto the board and scrawling _Abby Griffin_ across the bottom in her usual untidy scribble that it took him several weeks to work out how to read. Moving into the room he stops beside Raven and, folding his arms across his chest as he does so, looks at the photograph of the woman who’s either going to be perpetrator or victim within the next few days.

He feels a powerful shock of recognition that jars strongly with his certainty that he’s never seen her in his life before. He’s taking another few steps closer to the board, squinting down at her picture with such intensity that, had she been real, it would have been almost alarming, before he quite realises what he’s doing.

“Uh, Kane?” Raven’s voice recalls him to his senses and, with a jolt, he tears his eyes away from her picture to look round at Raven instead.

Clearing his throat he straightens up and steps back so that he’s in line with Raven once more and, trying to sound robust and composed, “Who is she?”

Raven eyes him curiously for another half second then she too snaps back into action and says promptly, “A doctor. She’s the head of surgery at the local hospital,” she explains then pins another picture in place beside the first, a younger girl under which she scrawls untidily, _Clarke Griffin_ , “That’s her daughter,” she explains, stepping back and growling at the brace on her leg as it threatens to jam, then continues as though there had been no interruption when it behaves itself once more, “Sixteen, seems like a good kid, doesn’t look like there’s much of a potential threat there.”

“What about a partner?” Marcus asks, studying the woman’s face and wondering how the head of surgery could be complicit in a crime and not seeing any reason so far why anyone might wish her harm.

Raven shakes her head, “Single as far as I can tell,” she informs him crisply, “There was a husband but he died almost a year ago, it looks as though it’s just been her and Clarke since then.”

Marcus nods, beginning to pace around the well-worn path on the floor he tends to trace whenever he’s thinking hard, “What about a disgruntled patient? Or the family of someone she lost?”

Again Raven shakes her head, “She’s damned good at her job from what I can tell, much like me,” she adds modestly drawing a small smile from him before she continues, “No complaints at all in the last few years and nothing serious enough from before that that warrants looking at.”

Marcus squints down at her, a definite frown creasing between his eyes as he looks between Raven and the picture and brief profile on the clear board in front of her and says, “So you can’t see any source of potential threat to her?” she shakes her head, “Do you think she’s considering committing a crime?” he asks, disregarding the notion on some instinct he doesn’t quite understand, frowning, then forcing him to ask, “How did her husband die? Anyone she might want revenge against?”

Yet again Raven shakes her head, “Nope. He died in a car crash, they ruled that it was just an accident, no-one really at fault, no-one to take revenge on.”

Marcus’ frown deepens, “Are you sure your machine isn’t malfunctioning?” he asks wryly.

Raven jabs him hard in the ribs with the cane she uses to help support her, something she hasn’t been driven to do in quite a long time, “You take that back,” she growls threateningly, “Alie don’t listen to him. Or maybe do, and let him get hit by a truck the next time he carelessly runs across the road trying to be a superhero.”

“That still doesn’t answer my ques-“ he begins, smirking and knowing this will incense her.

“Of course she’s not malfunctioning,” Raven grumbles very indignantly at him then jabs her can at the picture of Abby Griffin on the board, “That woman’s life is going to be in danger or else she’s going to try and kill someone in the next few days, you wait and see.”

“Okay, okay,” he says, raising his hands in mock surrender, “I’ll get started on the surveillance of her then, see if I can figure out what your machine is picking up on.”

Raven nods in approval and stumps back to her chair, still looking disgruntled about his slurs on her masterpiece, “Keep me updated,” she calls at him and he waves a hand at her in silent recognition before he heads out, inserting his earpiece so he can keep talking to her.

“You know,” Raven says breezily after he’s spilled out onto the street and he’s given her Abby’s address so he can keep an eye on her as she leaves for work, “I am technically your boss, Kane,” she reminds him in smug, superior tones, “I pay your wages. You should be nicer to me you know or I might fire you and find someone else.”

“Yes ma’am, sorry ma’am,” he says with exaggerated courtesy as he ducks into his car.

This shuts her up for almost a full ten seconds and he can picture her shuddering before she announces, “Don’t do that again, that was weird.”

He smirks, shaking his head, and dutifully follows her directions until he ends up at a small cluster of larger houses, each separated by their own garden, on the outskirts of town, and trundles along the street until he finds the house belonging to Abby.

Watching from the car, camera poised to take pictures of anyone she might meet or might be unduly hanging around for Raven to search and figure out who they are and if they might be a threat to their new number, or in turn, if she could be a threat to them, though that same odd instinct as before is telling him that she’s not a perpetrator and seeing her now with her daughter he feels an even stronger desire to protect her from whatever’s coming.

Raven chatters away in his ear as usual about this and that but he’s barely listening to her today, his whole being is fixed on the woman he’s watching feeling such a powerful sense of gravity and an almost magnetic connection towards her.

He can’t explain it to himself, he’s been helping Raven with this job for over a year now and he’s always operated with a clipped, cold detachment to save himself the pain of making a wrong assumption about a number and having to turn on who he had once believed to be a victim he had to protect. It had just made everything so much simpler and easier to work at a certain distance from these people and there’s never been a time he’s been tempted to change his MO in this regard.

Until now that is. Until her.

But he doesn’t know what it is about her that’s so special. There’s no connection between them, even if he had somehow forgotten it, had stumbled across her in a former operation when he was still special ops and it had slipped his conscious mind, falling back into the obscurity of his subconscious, which he’s sure it hasn’t, he remembers almost everyone he ever dealt with on those mission in graphic, sometimes toxic detail, Raven would have discovered any sort of link between them when she ran her background check on Abby.

He’s sure that she’s not a figure from his past; at least not a past that he can remember and he doesn’t understand why he feels so strongly towards her, why he feels such a desire to keep her safe and protect her from any harm. Trying to reason with himself he reminds himself that she, like him and the death of his mother, has suffered a recent, painful loss and he might be acting out of empathy and compassion and the desire to spare her any further agony and suffering.

But something deep in a part of him he usually keeps walled off and shut away from the rest of him stirs and wakes and whispers now that it’s something else, something more than that, something that runs deeper than empathy or compassion for a stranger, something-

“Kane,” Raven’s sharp voice intrudes on his muddled thoughts and makes him jump, “She’s leaving for work, aren’t you supposed to be following her? Make sure she doesn’t get abducted on the way?”

Giving himself a hard shake he hastily turns the key in the ignition and follows the car at a discrete distance, keeping her in his sights but never following obviously enough to pose a threat, following Raven’s instructions and taking a few diversions that take him out of the way but not for long enough that she could ever be in any real danger. He follows her as she drops her daughter off at school and then heads off towards the hospital in the centre of town.

Once inside the hospital he realises very quickly that she’s going to be incredibly difficult to get close to in the maze of clinical corridors, most of which he’s not supposed to be in, “Any suggestions?” he asks Raven quietly, ducking out of the way for a moment to ponder his predicament.

Raven snorts impatiently and says, with evident amusement in her voice, “C’mon Kane, I built the machine that finds the threats. I translate the numbers that come in. I recruited you. I run background checks. I give you city plans and building plans. I warn you of threats before they appear. I provide you with all the information you need but you know there are limits to even my abilities,” she tells him smoothly while he rolls his eyes and waits for the conclusion of her lofty monologue, “I know I’m clearly the brains of this operation but I can’t do _everything_ for you, some problems you just have to solve on your own, I can’t always be there to hold your hand-“

“Okay, thanks for the assistance Raven,” he says, rolling his eyes, “But I think I have an idea.”

Twenty minutes later, he’s perching on the low bench in a consultation room, trying not to fidget too much as he waits for Dr Griffin to come and see to him.

“She’s going to have a field day with you,” Raven informs him bluntly, “Do you still have that bullet fragment lodged in your calf?”

“No, you dug it out when I got back to the Library and told me to ‘suck it up’ remember?” he reminds her, suppressing a shudder and trying not to wince at the memory.

“Oh yeah,” she says reminiscently, heavy traces of nostalgia in her voice before she returns abruptly to Earth and his current situation, “Calm down would you,” she chides him, “She’s going to make you.”

He sighs, “I’m here to get a bit of backache checked out Raven, I don’t think she’s going to peg me as ex-special ops keeping an eye on her because her life or other’s lives might be in danger,” he replies patiently, rolling his eyes, glad that he’s in a place where there are no cameras she can use to watch him.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me,” she tells him off and he splutters, unable to understand how she figured it out but, based on her gleeful hoot of laughter, he suspects she was just guessing correctly and restrains the urge to roll his eyes yet again, “And she _is_ going to think that something’s wrong with you if you don’t settle down,” she continues in a much more business-like way.

“Something’s supposed to be wrong with me, otherwise I wouldn’t need a doctor would I?” he jokes feebly then adds, shifting self-consciously, “I don’t much like hospitals.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Raven snorts, “That’s why I had to dig that bullet fragment out of your calf because you were too chicken to go to a doctor and get them to do it properly.”

“You did just fine,” he grumbles irritably, not wishing to discuss this any further.

“Yep, because I didn’t stab you with a single needle,” Raven grins at him then, “What if she does?”

“Who?” he asks blankly.

“Dr Griffin the person you’re sitting here waiting for,” she sighs theatrically, in a very long-suffering sort of way.

“I doubt she will,” Marcus says, immediately considering then attempting to dismiss the possibility, “I’m here for totally feigned backache remember?”

“Just don’t let her see the hole that bullet made in your calf, she’ll never let you leave that hospital,” Raven teases him then adds before he can responds, “She’s coming now, better stop talking to me before she adds talking to thin air to the list of your complaints.”

Sure enough a few moments later the door opens and the woman he’s been tasked by the machine to protect or stop steps into the room, smiling wanly at him. As she steps around to the computer and pulls up the small report he had left with reception explaining why he needs to see a doctor and that Raven had tweaked to ensure that it was Dr Griffin who ended up seeing him, he takes a moment or two to study her carefully.

There’s a quiet sort of grace about the way she holds herself. She’s petite, short and slim, her long hair bound up in a practical braid down her back to keep it out of the way while she’s working and her eyes are large and soft when she turns to him, with a sense of gentle warmth in them that makes him understand why she became a doctor; the empathy they contain for the people suffering around her is immediately obvious.

“So,” she says, consulting her computer screen and then glancing up at Marcus, “Backache bothering you Mr...” she consults her notes again but he interrupts smoothly,

“Kane. But Marcus is fine,” he finds himself adding without quite knowing why. She surveys him for a moment then offers him a faint smile. 

“You’re on a case, not a date,” Raven interjects, “Nobody calls you _Marcus,_ I don’t call you Marcus, most people don’t even know that you have any other name, they think it’s just ‘Kane’.”

He ignores her with difficulty, forcing himself to maintain the smile on his face and focus on Abby as he says evenly, “Yes backache, a workplace injury. My boss was _very_ unsympathetic,” Raven snorts in disapproval and Abby raises a concerned eyebrow, “But I just need an updated prescription from you, I don’t want to take up too much of your time,” he continues simply as she checks the notes that Raven had invented and uploaded into the system before she appears confirming everything he’s said.

“Well,” Abby says, checking her notes once more and not noticing anything as Marcus slips his phone out of his pocket and forces it to pair with hers, their proximity now allowing him to do so, securing a mirror image of her phone onto his and providing him with a way to listen in and spot any potentially dangerous situation before it arises, “This all seems to be in order, I can get your prescription written up now, there’s nothing else bothering you while I’m here?”

“How long have you got, Doc?” Raven smirks and Marcus again ignores her.

“No,” he says, glancing down at his phone and making quite sure he’s managed to bluejack her phone properly before looking back up at her and smiling, “No that’ll be all, thanks,” he says, hopping down from the bench and trying not to look too spritely, reminding himself that he’s supposed to be injured.

She walks him to the door, holding it open for him and wishing him well and he thanks her once more as he slips back into the hospital, digging around in his pocket for a pair of headphones so he can listen in on the rest of Abby’s day and try and pinpoint any threats before they become threats.

“Well?” Raven prompts him as he sits down in an unobtrusive area in the reception, as impatient as though he’s forgotten to tell her something of vital importance.

“Well what?” he shoots back, “I was only with her for about five minutes. Even I can’t find a conceivable threat in an empty room.”

“No, not that,” Raven says, as though her meaning should have been blindingly obvious from the first, “What do you think about her?”

He pauses in the act of inserting one of the headphones into his ear and frowns, thinking this an odd question as it certainly isn’t one Raven’s ever asked him before, “Why are you asking me that?” he demands, a little too sharply, wondering, not for the first time today, what it is about this woman that seems to have gotten under his skin so thoroughly.

Raven seems to be thinking along the same lines as this because she says, “There’s something about her. What is it? Do you know her or something?”

“No,” Marcus says slowly, while inwardly wondering how she realised that there was something different about this number, though, he supposes that she has known him long enough and worked closely enough with him to sense small changes in him, and he suspects there have been more than a few moments today, and most of them a bit more than small that have alerted her to his complicated feelings regarding this number and this case.

“Are you sure about that Kane?” Raven demands, her tone falling just short of light and teasing, tinged with too much tense concern for it to be so.

“Yes,” he replies, just as slowly as before, “But there’s something, something about her, I don’t know, I can’t explain,” he shakes his head and Raven remains uncharacteristically silent, giving him a moment to think and to try and put his thoughts into words for her, “I don’t know her, I’m sure of that,” he says carefully, weighing each word before he speaks it, “But I feel like I do.”

Raven’s quiet for a long time then, “You’re going to have to be a bit clearer than that Kane.”

Growling faintly in frustration he drags his fingers through his hair and tries again, wondering, briefly, why he’s bothering to try and explain it at all, “I feel like I know her, I feel like I _owe_ her something,” pausing a moment he then finds himself murmuring softly, “She’s special. There’s something about her that’s special.”

He sits, waiting for a typical sardonic quip to come down to him from Raven but again she surprises him by staying quiet for a long time then saying evenly, “I better get to work on finding out more about her and identifying the threat then,” and with that she departs, leaving him alone with his surveillance and his tumultuous thoughts.

The increased proximity of the consultation with her had thrown him more surely than bombs or bullets flying around his head while he runs for his life ever have. The faint pulse he had felt, the vaguest undercurrent of a connection that had thrummed through him that morning when Raven had revealed her name and picture to him in the Library had intensified over the course of the day as he’d followed her, keeping an eye on her and trying to identify any threats, peaking during the few minutes he’d spent physically in her presence.

Even now, listening to her patiently talk someone through the use of their new inhaler while the child’s anxious mother peppers her with a half a hundred questions at the speed of light, the simple sound of her voice is enough to spark something within him, that same feeling that he could only describe as a gut instinct, a strange pull towards her that he’s never felt towards anyone else before.

It’s not attraction, at least not in the typical sense, at a baser level perhaps, their souls whispering to one another as they pass but never going any further than that. It’s deeper than that, stronger than that, and far more intimate, something that transcends knowledge or understanding or the reason he’s buried himself so firmly in for so long. It scares him and it exhilarates him all at once.

But the part of all of this that he’s lingering on isn’t the strange, magnetic connection that seems to exist between them, but the fact that he could have sworn that she felt it too.

He spends the rest of the shift keeping an eye on Abby through the link Raven’s program had forced between their phones, constantly set to high alert and ready to intervene and find her if it looks as though she’s in danger. After the span of a full nine hour shift however, the biggest threat to her person has been a junior doctor by the name of Jackson almost spilling hot coffee on her and she managed to save that situation by herself without any assistance from him whatsoever.

As he slips into his car and prepares to tail her home, thinking that perhaps the threat isn’t work related after all, though it had seemed likely given Raven’s research that had pointed to the fact that she had become largely withdrawn after her husband’s death, rarely doing much except pulling increasingly long shifts at work and otherwise spending her time at home with her daughter.

Pulling into Abby’s street again he rolls his shoulders, trying to get comfortable, eyes closed as he listens to her enter the house and call out a tired greeting to her daughter.

“Have you found anything?” he asks Raven as mother and daughter sit down to dinner and he begins rummaging absently in the glove compartment for some food to keep him going while he maintains his vigil outside.

“No,” she replies dejectedly, sounding as frustrated with this situation as he feels. Almost twenty four hours since the machine gave them Abby’s number and neither of them have been able to come up with a single threat, either painting her as the victim or the perpetrator, “I’ve been through her finances, her emails, her text messages, phone calls, work records, everything I can think of. I’ve run background checks on all of her colleagues they all came back clean. I did the same thing for every patient that she saw or even briefly spoke to today and the only one that came up with having anything to hide and didn’t appear to be what they were pretending to be was you,” he can tell from her aggrieved tone that she’s taking this inability to find anything even remotely threatening deeply to heart.

“Are you sure you’re machine is working?” he asks her tiredly, rubbing at his eyes and eyeing the energy bar he’s managed to turn up unenthusiastically.

He can hear the scowl in her answer, “Yes of course I am,” she growls indignantly, “She’s perfect, she wouldn’t have given us this number if there wasn’t a threat here.”

“Are you sure you decoded the number correctly?” he shoots back at her.

“I’m about _this_ far away from firing your ass right now Kane,” she grumbles back, then, more helpfully, “Yes, I’m sure. I decoded the number right. And the machine gave us the right number. There’s a threat here. You just have to look a bit harder for it that’s all.”

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do all day?” he demands incredulously, taking his turn to scowl grumpily at the insult to his work ethic.

“Well just try harder,” Raven admonishes tartly, “What’s she doing now anyway?”

“Eating dinner,” Marcus replies, stretching and yawning then suggesting sardonically, “Maybe she’ll choke on a fishbone and we’ll discover it was the salmon plotting all along.”

“Kane,”

“Mm?”

“Don’t try to be funny,” she tells him cuttingly and the pair of them share a small smirk.

A few hours after this Raven contacts a friend they have in the local police department and has him babysit Abby for the rest of the evening so Marcus can return to the Library, brief Raven on the day’s events that she hadn’t already picked up on from the hospital security feeds and Marcus’ regular updates, eat something, shower and get some sleep before the next day.

****

“This is a bad idea,” he tells her flatly as he walks self-consciously through the hospital doors and into the lobby.

“No it’s not, you look adorable in those scrubs,” Raven teases him mercilessly, helping to soothe his worries not one bit.

“This is by far the worst idea you’ve ever had,” he glowers at her, shuffling slowly through the hospital in Abby’s wake, trying to look natural and as though he belongs and knows what he’s doing.

“Surely it’s not the worst idea I’ve _ever_ had,” she muses thoughtfully, “Remember that time I told you to drop that potassium in water to make an explosion for a quick getaway and-“

“And it nearly burned half my face off?” he intones wryly, “Yes Raven, for some reason I do remember that.”

She just sniggers then says, “Well then, this is definitely not the worst idea I’ve ever had,” she tells him smugly, as though she’s just defeated him in reasoned argument.

“That doesn’t mean it’s good,” he shoots back flatly.

“You need to get closer to our number,” she begins loftily, quoting back the same arguments she had used with him in the Library this morning, “And it was pretty easy to fake a background for you as a doctor of, what did I make you a doctor of-“

“Raven!” he yelps, stopping dead in his tracks and causing two startled looking nurses to have to swerve around him to avoid him.

“Oh yeah, a doctor of oncology,” she says perkily, as though this wasn’t a worrying oversight.

“That’s a big word, are you sure you know what it means?” he asks drily, shoving his hands into the pockets of his scrubs and continuing to stomp through the halls in search of Abby.

Raven ignores this and ploughs resolutely on as though there had been no interruption, “When you save her life you should tell her afterwards her hospital’s security really sucks, it was no problem to add you in as an extra doctor, I’ve got backdated credentials and everything.”

“Maybe that has more to do with your genius than this hospital’s lack of security,” Marcus suggests vaguely, coming to the end of a corridor and taking a right on a whim, “And if you wouldn’t mind using some of that genius to tell me where to go right now I’d appreciate it.”

“Oh, sure thing,” he can hear the frantic tapping of computer keys over their comm link then, “Keep going along that corridor, when you get to the end turn left...”

He follows Raven’s instructions through the hospital until he reaches the surgery section where Raven informs him Abby’s just scrubbed up to take part in a routine surgery. Using his cover, he’ll be able to hover around in the general vicinity where people are too busy coming and going to notice him loitering.

“How long is she set to be in there for?” Marcus asks, eyeing the coffee machine opposite him and wondering whether it’s worth risking his dollars on.

“About...” he hears the tapping of keys as Raven looks up some log or schedule or other, “Five and a half hours,” she concludes and Marcus suppresses a groan as he looks around the barren hallway, “Three’s a viewing room a couple of doors to your left,” she tells him, “You can watch what’s going on from in there, it’s a one-way mirror, no-one else will know you’re there.”

Deciding this is a good idea Marcus drags one of the chairs from the corridor outside and drags it in front of the window, settling himself down with a cup of coffee that barely rates the name and watching as Abby begins her surgery, clearly talking the group of interested looking junior doctors clustered around her through the procedure as she goes along.

The first hour or so of the surgery passes without any incident whatsoever. Abby conducts the procedure as calmly as if she were buttering toast at a breakfast table and chattering away as she does so, pointing out interesting features of the surgery, things the younger doctors would have to be aware of and even allowing a few of them to make some cuts themselves, closely supervised and directed by her.

It’s obvious from the way her hands move with precise motions, doing precisely what she wants them to, that she’s an outstanding surgeon and the whole process is somewhat mesmerizing for Marcus, even though he’s separated from her and her patient by a thick piece of glass that screens him from view.

A little after an hour and a half has passed however he’s distracted for the first time by the sound of running feet and shouting just beyond the room. Half-rising from his chair he checks the gun that’s still securely holstered at his hip, trying to reassure himself that there’s probably been some sort of emergency and that he is in a hospital, but he hasn’t been able to overcome his instincts before they’re proven right.

Seconds later the door behind Abby bursts open and a man, professional he can tell at a glance, step into the door, gun raised threateningly. The students around her scream and allow themselves to be herded into a corner but Abby remains standing beside her patient, the solitary figure standing flatly before him.

“Raven!” he barks, already heading for the door and wrenching it open to try and get on the scene of things.

“I’m on it,” she tells him shortly and he can hear her fingers flying as she works to identify the assailant, both of them slightly thrown at having had no warning whatsoever before he struck.

Marcus is feet from the door into the operating theatre when he hears the gun go off and his heart spasms painfully in his chest, seeming to contract so much on its last beat that it shuts off his airway and he staggers to a shocked halt, reeling as though the bullet had somehow conspired to plunge its way into his chest, driving the air from him.  

His training kicks in a moment later to overcome the Earth-shattering shock, suppressing his fight or flight instincts and he braces himself, pausing a moment to get a read on the situation before he bursts into the room, startling the attacker and possibly causing more damage.

“Do you know who he is yet?” he asks Raven quietly, trying to get a read on his background and how he’s likely to react to him bursting into the room and complicating things.

“No,” she says in anguish, “I haven’t been able to find him in any database and I’ve searched them all,” he drags his fingers through his hair, groaning and then she says, “From what you’ve told me about tactical assaults and strategy though he’s been professionally trained, military definitely, maybe even special ops,” he lets out a low whistle, “I know,” Raven says, “Still,” she adds with a faint air of smugness he can’t understand until she says, “This is _definitely_ what I would call a threat, looks like Alie is working just fine.”

He groans, “Raven, if you could pick a time to gloat when I’m not about to have a gun wielded by a highly trained madman pointed at me I’d appreciate it,” he growls at her.

“Right,” she agrees, snapping back to business, “Heroics and saving the world now, gloating later, okay,” he starts moving towards the door again and she interrupts, “Kane, tell me you have a plan here,” she says, sounding a little worried.

“I have a plan,” he assures her smoothly before bursting through the door, gun raised, covering the assailant before he has a chance to move. His eyes sweep around the room, taking in the young doctors still huddling, silently in a corner as well as the cracked floor tile and spent shell casing that tells him that the shot he heard was, as suspected, fired as a warning and without the intention of injuring anyone, crowd control, in short.

The man standing covering Abby doesn’t move, he keeps his gun trained on her head but he does turn his head to look at Marcus while Raven hisses, “Kane if this is all your plan entails it sucks,” which he ignores.

“Move away from her,” Marcus instructs firmly, “Lower the gun slowly and come towards me,” he says while Abby’s eyes jerk nervously from him to the man still holding the gun over her head while she raises her hands a little away from her body, clearly not sure what to do or how to react to the situation unfolding before her eyes.

“No,” is the only answer he’s given. Setting his jaw he takes a step forwards and cocks his gun, making his threat more imminent and pressing. The man opposite him mirrors him, cocking his own gun but keeping it focused firmly on Abby who tenses.

“It’s okay,” Marcus says soothingly, letting his eyes dart towards her and giving her a small, swift nod to try and comfort her, though he’s not sure it does much good.

“If you take another step, another move, do anything I don’t like, I’ll kill her,” the man tells her in an cold, flat voice that tells Marcus perfectly clearly that he won’t hesitate to do so.

Adjusting his grip ever so slightly on his gun he says, “If you kill her I’ll kill you,” then, feeling as though this might not be the best motivation for the man with steely, eyes that look like chips of ice in his face, “If you wanted to kill her you would have done that already, you need her for something. What?”

The man blinks once and in the silence that follows while he decides whether or not to answer Marcus’ question, he takes a moment to study him, try and find any weaknesses or tells that might explain what’s going on. The man is dressed in black from head to heel with no distinguishing marks anywhere on his clothing. There’s a thin scar that curves down one side of his face, framing one of his eyes and the black glove on the hand that’s still holding the gun to Abby’s head has curled back a little on his wrist revealing the fringes of what Marcus suspects to be a military tattoo.

Beyond that there’s nothing whatsoever to identify or explain this man and a moment later he speaks, distracting Marcus from his examination, “I don’t want to kill her,” he says slowly, “I want her to kill him,” he jerks his head towards the patient on the table behind Abby and Marcus’ brain reels once more, unable to make sense from this. If the patient on the table was the ultimate target his number should have come up, not Abby’s.

At that moment however, Raven gasps in his ear and says, “Kane, I’ve just understood something,” he pauses, waiting for her to explain and she does, all in a rush, “She’s the perpetrator,” this startles him so much he almost drops the gun, “Well, not exactly,” Raven amends, “They’ve set her up, there’s a paper trail, documents, links, it’s all supposed to look as though she killed this guy of her own free will, they’ve made it look as though she thinks he was complicit in her husband’s death.”

“Was he?” Marcus asks quietly, trying not to move his lips.

“No of course not, I told you, it was an accident, no-one was to blame,” Raven tells him impatiently, “But don’t you get it? They’re trying to make it look as though she had motive. They’ve created a fake trail of breadcrumbs to hide their own part in all of this and make it look as though she always planned to commit this murder. If the machine hadn’t pointed us towards this they’d have been hard pressed to prove that Abby hadn’t planned all of this and done it herself. They’ve made it look as though she’s the perpetrator and then they’re going to kill her when she’s done what they wanted, I guess they’ll stage it as a suicide, no-one will ever know that there was a third party at play.”

Marcus is still trying to process all of this when the man opposite him speaks again, this time directing his words to Abby, “The surgery you’re performing is complex and delicate,” he tells her slowly, his words sounding rehearsed, or else as though they’re being fed to him and Marcus notices an earpiece, similar to the one he uses to communicate with Raven, “The next stage particularly so. I want you to go through with it. I want you to catch an artery, a mistake that’s rather common in this type of procedure. He’ll bleed out in seconds. There won’t be anything you can do to stop it,” he informs her in a flat, monotone voice, as though he was telling her what the weather was like outside instead of asking her to commit murder.

Abby stares him straight in the eye, drawing herself up slightly as she does so, her hand tightening around the scalpel in her hands, her eyes flickering so briefly towards Marcus he almost misses it before she refocuses on the man opposite her, who has a good foot and a half not to mention several stone on her then says flatly, “No.”

The man blinks down at her in what seems to be genuine surprise at her stark refusal to carry out his demands, he’s clearly not the kind of man who’s refused very often, and certainly not by tiny women half his size he happens to be pointing guns at.

He takes a threatening step closer to her and Marcus tightens his hand on his own gun as he presses the muzzle of his own hard against Abby’s temple, “I’m asking you to make a mistake, a perfectly understandable one, and then let him die.”

“You’re asking me to commit murder,” Abby says, flinching slightly at the closeness and the gun on her but point blank refusing to back down even still and Marcus feels his respect for her rising, “And I’m telling you that I won’t do it, whatever you threaten me with. This man is in my care and I’m not going to kill him. If you want him dead you’re going to have to shoot me and then shoot him.”

The man gnashes his teeth furiously and pauses, his face becoming oddly blank for a moment and Marcus realises that he’s receiving instructions from whoever is talking to him through the earpiece he noticed earlier. Seizing his chance while he’s distracted he points his gun down and pulls the trigger. Fast as he is, the bullet rips through his knee and takes him down but he also manages to get off a shot of his own which clips Marcus in the shoulder before he’s able to kick his gun away.

“Kane!” Raven barks sharply at the sound of gunfire, having no way to know what’s happened, “Kane, talk to me, are you okay? What’s happening?”

“I’m fine,” he growls, bending down intending to knock Abby’s assailant unconscious before he can do any more damage but Abby herself has already seized a syringe and bottle from the side and plunged it into the man’s neck, causing him to go limp almost immediately afterwards.

“What did you give him?” he asks in mild awe as Abby pushes herself to her feet looking shaken and slightly stunned at what she herself has done.

Before she answers him she turns to the frightened young doctors still huddled, terrified in the corner of the room and says sharply, “Go, get out of here, raise the alarm,” she orders and they all leap to their feet and hurry from the room to obey her.

Then and only then she turns to Marcus and says promptly, “Propofol, an anaesthetic.”

“Well done,” he says, then steps forwards, stowing both guns within reach but out of the way, leaving his hand free to grasp Abby’s wrist and try and lead her from the room, “Come on,” he growls, “We have to get you out of here, he might not have been alone.”

Abby however surprises him by glowering just a fiercely at him as she had to the man he had so recently shot and says, “I’m not leaving my patient, if I go now he’ll bleed to death before anyone can get to him.”

“You were nearly shot,” Marcus tells her, anger colouring his words, coming, he knows, from the pulse of adrenaline that’s still burning through his veins.”

“Yes,” she snaps, rounding on him, “I was nearly shot because I refused to commit murder and I’m now going to say the same thing to you that I said to him,” she jerks her head at the prone figure bleeding silently on the floor behind them, “This man is my patient, he’s in my care and I am not going to let him die.”

Marcus opens his mouth to protest further, tell her that they’re in a hospital, that someone else can come and take over, that he has to get her out of here before they’re joined by anyone else but before he can do so, she shoots a question of her own at him, “Who are you?” she demands, eyeing him suddenly warily, taking in his blood spattered scrubs.

“I’ll explain later,” he tells her shortly, “We have to get you out of here now.”

She ignores this completely but eyes him, looking at his face this time, “I know you,” she murmurs quietly and for the first time Marcus lets himself be distracted from the mission as she whispers the same sentiment he’s been feeling for days, this sense of connection with her, this sense of knowing without knowing but before he can become utterly lost to this coincidence she shakes her head slightly then says, “You came in for a consultation the other day. Backache, you wanted a new prescription, how, who-“

“Later,” he repeats with a firm growl, “We need to get you out of here quickly. The next lot of men who show up won’t waste their time trying to persuade you to do anything for them, they’re just going to kill you as soon as they see you.”

“I told you,” she says, also seeming to snap back into her brisk, professional manner, “That I’m not leaving my patient to die.”

Marcus stares at her in furious incredulity for a moment then shakes his head and demands curtly, “How long will it take to stabilise him?”

“That depends,” Abby says grimly, “Are you actually medically trained?” she wants to know, eyeing his borrowed scrubs.

“I can handle some emergency field medics if the need arises,” he tells her, “But not really, no.”

She grimaces at this but still gestures him towards the sink in the corner, “Scrub up over there, you’ll have to do. If you help me, do everything I say and do it right, we should be able to get out of here in about ten minutes.”

Marcus doesn’t waste any more time arguing with her, sensing that that’s an entirely pointless endeavour, he just crosses over to the sink and begins to scrub up as she turns back to her patient, remarkably calm in spite of everything that’s happened in the last few minutes, “How are we looking Raven?” he demands as he squirts the thick, bright yellow surgical antiseptic over his hands.

“You can do what the lady tells you,” she says, the smirk evident in her voice at hearing him bossed around like this, “I’ve hacked the line from the guy’s earpiece, no idea who he’s talking to but it sounds like he’s the only one in the hospital right now. She’s going to be in danger though, you should get her out of there as quickly as they can, revenge is going to be on their mind, she just screwed up some very carefully laid plans, they’re not going to be happy about that.”

“I’m going to bring her back to the Library,” Marcus tells her curtly as he makes his way back to the operating table, ready to receive his orders. To his surprise Raven makes no objection to this whatsoever she just says,

“As soon as you get out and into the car I’ll direct you and give you the quickest route back to me,” she pauses a moment then adds, “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Fine,” he lies, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his shoulder, fairly certain that the wound isn’t life threatening and will keep until he can get Abby somewhere safe.

Standing opposite her he meets her eyes and silently communicates to her that he’s ready and willing to do whatever she needs him to. She orders him around with an air that wouldn’t have been out of place in the military and he finds himself becoming more and more impressed with how composed and in control she seems, calm and settled, her hands remaining perfectly steady throughout her procedure.

As soon as she’s finished setting clamps and putting in a few emergency sutures he takes her by the arm and leads her out of the hospital, his gun held just behind his hip at the ready, listening for Raven to warn him of any potential threats, “How do we look?” he asks tersely, keeping Abby back and behind him as he clears the next corridor.

“You’ll be alright if you hurry,” she tells him, her voice equally tense, “But you’re going to have company in a few minutes. Lots of company.”

Cursing under his breath he leads Abby into the lobby and then out into the car park but at this point she rounds on him, refusing to get into the car he’s trying to usher her in to, “Stop,” she says, with such a commanding voice, the same one she had used with him in the operating room, “I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me who you are.”

Snarling in frustration he snaps, “I’m the man who saved your life back there. The man who’s still trying to save your life now but I need you to come with me and I need you to trust me. I’ll explain everything as best I can once we’re safe I promise, but we can’t stay here it’s too dangerous.”

Still she doesn’t move, too busy staring up into his face, “There’s something about you,” she whispers and that strange magnetic pull he feels towards her intensifies for a cluster of heartbeats, “I don’t know what it is, it’s like, like we’re connected like-“

“Like you know me,” he whispers softly, allowing himself to forget the urgency of the situation for just a moment, unable to look away from her deep, rich eyes, “Even though you’re sure you don’t.”

“Yes,” she whispers, exhaling in relief or surprise he can’t tell, “You feel it too?”

He nods, “Yes,” he breathes back, “But I can’t explain it, I don’t understand it any more than you do,” she opens her mouth again but Raven interrupts to warn him harshly that company is about two minutes away and that they need to move now and he cuts her off, “Abby,” he says, and the use of her name seems to call her back to herself, “I need you t come with me right now. I need you to trust me. Please.”

She hesitates for half a heartbeat more then she yanks at the car door handle and jerks it open, cramming herself into the passenger seat and making her decision as he’d requested. Marcus wastes no time in throwing himself into the driver’s seat and plunging the key into the ignition as Abby pulls a seatbelt on over herself with shaking, fumbling hands.

“Raven,” he says, starting up the car and beginning to move towards the exit, going slowly, not wanting to draw any undue attention to himself.

“I’m here,” comes the reassuring reply, “Take the first left then an immediate right, I’m going to guide you all the way, you’re going to have to be careful, these don’t look like guys you want to get mixed up with if you can avoid it.”

“No,” Marcus agrees, carefully following Raven’s instructions as she leads him away from the hospital and towards the sanctuary of the Library.

After a few minutes and at the sound of a shaky, rattling breath being drawn beside him he turns to see Abby with her head buried in her hands, shaking uncontrollably. The things she’s been put through in the last hour or so seem to have caught up to her finally now that she has no patient relying on her composure and no-one to see her fall to pieces except for the man who just went through it all with her.

Her breathing is coming in short, punchy gasps and he reaches over and takes her hand between his as they wait for a set of traffic lights to change, “Hey,” he whispers softly, “Are you okay?”

She looks up at him, her face chalk white, her eyes wide and staring, “No,” she breathes, staring at him as though this is the most ridiculous question in the world, “A man a held a gun to my head and tried to force me to commit murder then you shot that man and now we’re running from more people like him and you’re telling me that they all want to kill me so no, no I am not okay. How can _you_ possibly be okay?”

Marcus shrugs and shifts self-consciously in his chair, muttering darkly under his breath, “You get used to it.”

Glancing to his left and seeing that Abby’s still shaking and that her breathing is still ragged and uneven he reaches over and places a tentative hand in the valley against her shoulder blades. She doesn’t reject the contact and the warmth of her skin radiating through her scrubs sends faint tingles through his hand from the place where his hand is resting. Trying to ignore this he rubs her back in what he hopes is a soothing way and it does seem to help a little, her breathing levels out somewhat at least.

“This is insane,” Abby whispers, more to herself than to Marcus, pitching forwards once again, her face buried in her hands, then, without warning she sits up so sharply that Marcus jumps and has to swerve to avoid hitting the pavement he had nearly mounted, “We have to make a detour,” she says, turning to him, all shakiness and fear gone, her eyes suddenly blazing again the way they had been in the operating theatre when she had refused to kill her patient as commanded, “We have to get my daughter, Clarke, if I’m in danger she might be too, I want you to protect her as well.”

“Raven?” Marcus says questioningly, sure that Raven will already have foreseen this danger and have attended to it.

Sure enough, “I called Sinclair, asked him to send a detail over to the school to keep an eye on her,” she assures him immediately, “The machine doesn’t think she’s in danger and I can’t find anything that says she is either so it’s probably best that we don’t draw any attention to her, but she’s safe, I’d stake my life on that.”

Marcus relays this information to Abby who doesn’t look at all pleased or reassured by it, “I want to be with my daughter,” she tells him, so fiercely that he’s afraid she’s going to wrestle control of the car away from him if he continues to refuse her, “Please,” she adds beseechingly, crumbling a little, “She’s all I have left, I can’t lose her, I can’t let anything happen to her.”

“I understand,” Marcus murmurs gently, “But until we know what’s going on here you’re the one with the target on your back. If we bring Clarke with us she might be put in danger too. As soon as we get this sorted out I’ll take you to her, I promise, but in the meantime it’s safer for her to keep you separated, I’m sorry.”

Abby slumps back in her chair, processing this, then seems to accept it, “Okay,” she says, “As long as you’re sure she’s safe.”

“I’m positive,” he tells her firmly, trusting Raven in this.  

Abby nods again and takes a deep breath, dragging her fingers  through her hair and closing her eyes. She doesn’t say another word for the rest of the journey, just sits in total silence beside him, her eyes still closed, seemingly trying to process everything that she’s gone through in the last few hours.

Once they arrive at the Library he reaches over and places a gentle, cautious hand on her shoulder, not wanting to startle her. She still jumps in alarm but he supposes that can’t be helped, both of them are still amped up on adrenaline after the day’s adventures.

“We’re here,” he tells her quietly and she nods, reaching down and fumbling to unbuckle her seatbelt, a feat that takes her several attempts because her hands are shaking so much.

He moves around and takes her arm, steering her gently but firmly into the Library and telling her in what he hopes is a reassuring voice, “You’ll be safe here.”

Raven limps over to meet them and surprises Marcus by pulling him into a short, rough hug, then balancing out this startling display of affection by punching him in the arm and chastising at the same time as explaining the hug, “That was twice I thought you’d died on me today, Kane.”

“Well,” he says mildly, trying to lighten things, “I like to keep you on your toes.”

She scowls furiously at this and punches his arm again, “Next time don’t bother, just get your ass out of there before people start shooting at it,” she orders, Marcus reaches out and grips her shoulder, reassuring her that he’s okay and she nods, then glances behind him towards Abby.

Marcus turns and ushers her further into the room then says, “This is Raven Reyes,” he says, gesturing towards Raven who nods, “She’s my partner and was as responsible for getting you out of that hospital today as I was.”

“You’re embarrassing me, Kane, enough,” Raven says sardonically, rolling her eyes mockingly at him and he smiles thinly in return.

She moves past him and towards Abby, offering her a hand then leading her over to one of the softer chairs in the corner out of the way of her work station. Once she has Abby settled she lifts her head and whistles. A large dog bounds towards her, pausing for a second by Marcus’ side allowing him to ruffle his ears before he continues on and settles himself on his haunches beside Raven, watching her  for further instructions with large, intelligent eyes.

“You don’t mind dogs do you?” She checks hastily with Abby and when she shakes her head and says,

“We used to have one growing up, my daughter’s always begging me for a puppy,”

Raven then taps the chair beside Abby and commands, “Up,” the dog bounds obediently up onto the chair beside Abby and settles at her side, panting contentedly and allowing her to reach out and pat his head, a small, wobbly smile brushing her lips.

“This is Finn,” Raven explains, smiling as the dog cocks his head at the sound of his name, “He’s better looking than Kane and twice as useful, he can keep you company,” Abby smiles at this while Marcus scowls at Raven, and the two women share a look before Raven gets up and walks over to Marcus.

“What have you found out?” he asks, his voice low, keeping one eye on Abby who’s bonding with Finn.

“Nothing,” she says, “I don’t know who those guys were, I don’t know why they wanted to kill her patient and I don’t know why they wanted to kill _her_ either. That tells me that they’re good, they’re really good, and that they’ve probably been planning this for a long time.”

Marcus nods, looking gravely over at Abby, crossing his arms over his chest and thinking. Then, he turns to Raven and says, “You should go, get something to eat, freshen up, stretch your legs a little,” she scowls but he interrupts her, “The doctor told you you have to keep moving, you’ve been stuck at that desk all day and I know you get sore when that happens,” he tells her sternly, then, his voice softening, “There’s nothing we can do for a little bit. Abby and I need to recover from what happened at the hospital, take a few hours for yourself, I can hold down the fort here.”

Grumbling audibly about his mollycoddling Raven reluctantly agrees admonishing before she leaves, “If anything comes up-“

“I’ll call you,” he finishes for her, “As soon as it happens.”

Nodding, she makes to stump off, turning back at some point and saying, “You should think about getting something to eat and have some sleep yourself,” she informs him gruffly, “You look like shit.”

“Thanks Raven,” he says, shaking his head as she smiles innocently at him then allows herself to be shooed good-naturedly out of the room, leaving himself and Abby alone.

After a few moments he wanders back to Abby’s corner and sits on the sofa beside her, with Finn in between them, still allowing himself to be petted and seemingly enjoying himself. Once Abby’s looked up at him and holds his gaze for more than a few seconds without returning her attention hastily back to the big dog he thinks it safe to try broaching conversation again.

“How are you holding up?” he asks her quietly, studying her carefully for some sort of sign of this before she answers.

“Alright,” she answers, her voice only a little shaky this time, “Considering everything that’s happened today I suppose being all in one piece ought to be enough.”

“Perhaps,” he agrees carefully, “But if you’re not holding up then that’s okay,” he tells her softly.

“You seem to be doing alright with it all,” she says, now studying him in turn.

“I’ve been trained for it,” he explains lamely.

“Ex military?” she shoots at him, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

“Special ops,” he agrees with a short, terse nod. It’s a part of his life that’s shaded to be polite, over crowded with demons and a life he’d rather not think on too closely.  

She nods, “But does that ever really get easier to deal with?” she asks, the tremor more obvious in her voice now.

“It gets easier to block out, section off,” he says quietly, “It gets easier to delay feeling it until a time that’s more tactically appropriate,” she snorts in disgust at this and he looks up in time to see her shaking her head and looking grim.

“I don’t mean anything against you,” she says quickly, “You were incredible today, I know that’s the only reason we made it out of there alive but the whole idea is just...” she struggles for words  but he nods,

“I know,” he says softly, “I understand.”

She buries her hand in Finn’s thick fur again, letting herself tremble a little and adding in a soft whisper, “I don’t think it’s something I could ever get used to.”

On some instinct he reaches over and gently takes her hand in his. The impulse startles him almost as much as her acceptance of it because, after a moment and an inquisitive glance up at him, she allows the contact and even squeezes his hand back, comforted by his reassuring touch.

“I keep replaying it in my head,” she says quietly, “I can’t stop it, it’s like a film that I can’t mute or ignore or turn off,” she lowers her gaze again, shaking and Finn licks their entwined hands in what he clearly thinks is a helpful way, and maybe he’s not far off because it drags a faint smile from Abby.

“It’ll get easier,” he tries to reassure her, “You’re still full of adrenaline just now, once you’ve calmed down that will help. And time, time will help too,” he tries to reassure her but he’s never been very good at this on the whole but she squeezes his hand back again and he takes that to mean that he’s done okay.

After a moment she looks up at him again and waits until he meets her gaze before she says very seriously, “I haven’t thanked you, yet,” he blinks at her in mild confusion and she stares back at him and then adds slowly, as though she’s not sure if he’s mocking her, “For saving my life today. I haven’t said thank you.”

“Oh,” he says, cottoning on all of a sudden and wishing he had something more to say on the subject than ‘oh’, “Well that’s, it was nothing,” he tries to assure her gruffly.

“No,” she says, shifting a little closer, even with Finn sandwiched between them, “No it was something, Marcus,” she says, and a faint shiver runs through him at the way she says his name.

Hesitantly, she leans forwards and presses a soft kiss to his cheek and he feels himself immediately colouring up, heat flooding his face. Abby seems to be experiencing the same thing because she hastily looks away and begins clapping Finn again to give herself something to do.

After a long pause, which he too spends ruffling Finn’s ears, he finally says, “What you were saying in the car park, just before we left,” he begins slowly.  

“I trust you,” she says and this bald statement throws him for a moment before he remembers her declaration that she didn’t want to go anywhere with him until he explained himself.

“Why?” he finds the question bursting from him before he’s really given it any thought.

A small shaky laugh is dragged from her in return and she says shakily, “You’ve saved my life twice in the past few hours, Marcus, if I can’t trust you I think I’m in a worse state than I knew.”

He smiles at this and squeezes her hand, hoping to convey what he can’t put into words, then, frowning slightly, he tries again, “I was meaning, though, what you said about, about feeling as though you know me, as though we’re connected somehow.”

She looks up at him, all traces of laughter gone now and her eyes seem to deepen and widen all at once, the rich, liquid brown colour looking like velvet made molten, “Yes,” she whispers, “I remember,” then, shuffling in a little closer, at which point Finn jumps lightly off of the chair to settle himself at Marcus’ feet instead, but Abby barely seems to notice, “I can still, I can still feel it, you know.”

Swallowing hard Marcus nods and agrees, suddenly intensely aware of how close they are, “Me too,” he confesses, “I felt something the first time I saw your face and heard your name,” he admits, “I didn’t know what it was, I had never felt anything like it for anyone else before and at first I thought I could ignore it, that it was just, just one of those things...But it’s only gotten stronger in the past few days since I’ve actually started spending time in your company.”

Abby nods her head in agreement, “The first time I felt it was during that consultation,” she confesses to him, her eyes wide and beautiful, the kind of things that he could so easily be lost in, that he could so easily _let_ himself be lost in, as long as they were hers, “I just had such a feeling that I knew you, that you meant something to me that you, that you were special, important, but I didn’t know why, I’d never seen you before, I’d never heard your name, I was sure I didn’t know who you were but...”

“I thought you felt something too,” he says, moving still closer to her on the chair, his hand still held around hers, “I don’t know what this is,” he whispers to her, “I don’t know where it came from or why it’s happening but there is something between us, isn’t there.”

“Yes,” she whispers softly to him, never breaking eye contact with him, “Yes, I think there is.”

This time, as he shifts even closer to her, his eyes drifting faintly down to her lips, he jars his shoulder that a combination of adrenaline and gruelling training had helped him to ignore and he winces, a motion that isn’t missed by Abby.

“You’re hurt,” she exclaims, sitting back a little and looking concerned, her eyes raking over him trying to find the source of his agitation.

“No, really,” he tries feebly to protest, “It’s nothing, it’s not that bad, it’s-“

“Let me see,” she says sternly and her eyes fall on his shoulder and she gasps when she realises that it’s still oozing blood, “You’re bleeding!” she says, jumping to her feet so quickly that she startles Finn who jumps up as well, looking around for the source of her concern. Marcus puts a hand on the back of his neck to soothe him as Abby demands furiously, “Why didn’t you say anything? It looks serious.”

“It’s not, it-“ he begins weakly but she’s already marched off, poking around the Library here and there until she finds the first aid kit that Raven had used earlier to pick bullet fragments out of his calf, something that she keeps well-stocked for emergencies that are always likely to strike him, then she marches back to him with it.

“Abby, really, you don’t have to do this-“he tries to protest hopelessly but she gives him such a dark scowl that he desists almost at once and falls silent, letting her settle herself on the chair opposite him once more, the medical kit open on her lap, critically examining his contents while he sits there watching her.

Raising her head she blinks at him in surprise then plucks at the bottom of his scrubs and says briskly, “This is going to have to come off.”

Resigned, he tugs the light material up over his head, wincing slightly when it sticks to the wound in his shoulder, tugging at the ragged, raw skin and making him hiss faintly in pain. He discards the ruined fabric on the floor beside them and Finn looks inquisitively up at him after examining them briefly, he ruffles his ears once again to put the big dog at ease.

Abby moves in so close to him while she examines his shoulder that their bodies are a hair’s breadth from touching and he feels himself looking up and averting his eyes to the wall over her shoulder, trying to stop himself becoming ever more aware of just how close she is. He can feel the heat radiating from her skin against his chest and the soft puffs of hot breath that fall from her lips as she examines him.

Grumbling in disapproval she roots around in the med kit for a moment before she pulls out a pair of tweezers and looks him squarely in the eyes, “This is going to hurt,” she warns him grimly, “But there’s a bullet in your shoulder and it has to come out.”  

“Yes,” Marcus agrees, grimacing and bracing himself against the chair beneath them, “It does.”

“On three,” Abby says, clamping the tweezers tightly around the bullet and preparing to tug it out, “One, two-“ with a sharp tug and before he was quite ready for it, she yanks it out of his shoulder and he yelps, more out surprise than pain as Abby examines her prize with apparent enthusiasm, “It’s all there,” she says, dropping the bloody, metal lump into a small kidney dish, her tone as light and breezy  as though she’d done nothing more exciting than open a jam jar.  

“You said on three,” Marcus says, trying not to sound petulant but from the look she’s giving him he suspects he’s not been entirely successful at that.

“I did,” she agrees blithely, “But it’s out now, there’s no use complaining about it,” she informs him, rummaging around in the kit for some cloth and antiseptic then shooing him back so she can clean out the wound that’s now bleeding a fresh having had its make-shift stopper pulled from it.

Still looking grim he leans back in the chair slightly to allow him better access to prod and poke at his shoulder, looking very disapproving, “You should have said something while we were still in the hospital,” she growls at him, her slim fingers probing the ragged edges of the wound, “I would have had proper equipment there, proper local anaesthetic and painkillers and antibiotics.”

“If we’d have stayed in that hospital any longer a minor gunshot wound to the shoulder would have been the least of our worries,” he retorts mildly but from the way she glowers at him and the steely glint in her eye he senses that this argument is doing much to win her over and he falls silent again.

Silence descends upon them a moment later, shrouding them in the intimacy of the moment and she moves in a little closer to him still, her hands deft and gentle against the raw, inflamed cut. After seemingly satisfied by her examination she upends a little bottle of antiseptic over the cloth in her hand and then, giving him a small, warning glance before she begins, starts to clean out the wound in his shoulder.

A part of Marcus begins heartily wishing that he had mentioned the wound while he was still at the hospital surrounded by various drugs that would have numbed the excruciating stinging in his shoulder as she dabs at it with the harsh antiseptic. His hand curls itself into a fist and he gnashes his teeth in discomfort, causing Finn to nose anxiously at him, appearing concerned. With difficulty he pats the big dog’s head and manages to growl out an assurance that he’s alright.

Once she’s finished her cleaning Abby pats at the wound to remove the blood around the outside and give her a clearer view of what she’s working with then she selects a long, thin, curved needle and a length of catgut from the kit and begins threading it after ripping open the sterile packaging around it.

Marcus feels himself tensing, a problem that’s only intensified by the feeling of her soft small hands, cool against his feverishly hot skin. Every time her naked skin has made contact with his a feeling comparable to a mild electric shock has shot through his veins and terminated somewhere near his heart. He’s sure that she’s felt it too but neither of them are mentioning it again, though it’s making him tense even more so than he would have done with the needle alone.  

 Before she’s even touched him with the needle she pauses, palms still braced against his chest and looks up at him, “You need to relax,” she tells him quietly, “This will go much easier for you if you do.”

She seems to note the way he’s staring apprehensively at the needle in her hands because she softens slightly and says, “It only needs a couple of stitches to close it up but it does need them,” her voice is as gentle as her fingers and he forces himself to give her a very terse nod.

In spite of himself he can’t stop watching her at work. There’s a smooth rhythm to her sutures that suggests she’s placed hundreds, probably thousands of them in her career and they seem to be a certain speciality of hers. The ones she places in his ragged, uneven shoulder wound are as straight as the ranks of soldiers that used to be drawn up around him in the military and they tease and encourage the wound to close up in a much smoother, less noticeable way than someone else might have done.

“Thanks,” he murmurs when she cuts off the thread connecting the length of catgut to the stitches she’s already placed in his body and tosses the needle into the kidney dish beside the bullet she had removed earlier.

Raising her eyes to him again she gives him a soft smile and shakes her head, “It’s nothing,” she assures him quietly, cleaning the blood from her hands and focusing intently on them as she does so, refusing to meet his eyes again.

Once her hands are suitably clean she looks up, shaking back her hair and begins examining the newly stitched wound and her handiwork. After having poked and prodded at the cut several times, seemingly satisfied that they’ll hold, she begins rummaging around in the med kit again and pulls out a thick, cushioning pad which she places over the injury then takes several long strips of bandages out and eyes him. Finally coming to some sort of decision she presses in so that her body is flush against his and coaxes him to lift his arms out to either side so she can wrap the bandages securely around his shoulder without limiting his mobility.

As she works Marcus raises his eyes to the ceiling above them, trying not to be as aware as his thumping heart and increasingly warm skin seem to be of how it feels having her small, neat body fit so closely against his. He swallows hard and tries to pretend that he can’t feel every breath she takes pressing against him as her chest expands. All the while the same bond he’s felt towards her since Raven first gave him her number and her name, the same desire to protect her, the same wish to be near her, to be with her, to understand why she’s so important to him drags him deeper and deeper into the realms of impulsive actions he’s certain he’ll come to regret.

Just when he’s certain he’s about to snap like an elastic band wound up too many times she tapes the bandage around his shoulder firmly in place and then shuffles back a little, looking decidedly flushed and flustered herself though her voice is determinedly steady and professional when she asks briskly, “How does that feel?”

Cautiously, fearful of both irritating the cut and tearing either her stitches or the new bandage, he rotates his injured shoulder and is pleased to find that it moves well and with considerably less pain than he had been anticipating, meaning that it’s unlikely to be a hindrance if and when he inevitably gets into another life-threatening situation with bullets flying overheard like lethal hailstones that requires him to think and be able to act quickly.

Nodding his approval he opens his mouth to thank her and tell her it feels perfect but the words die in his throat without ever making it to the surface of his lips when he sees the way that she’s looking at him. Her eyes have moved down from the now patched and covered raw, bloody wound on his shoulder down his chest and torso, cataloguing the various other scrapes and scars that pepper his body, relic of having spent most of his adult life in highly pressurised, dangerous situations that have resulted in more than a few injuries in his time.  

Her eyes flickering briefly towards his as though seeking permission, or rather, waiting to see whether he’ll ask her to stop she examines some of them more closely when he makes no move to halt her.

Reaching out as tentatively as if his skin might crumble into ash if she dares to touch it, she lets her fingers brush hesitantly against a scar just above his hips from another bullet wound that had torn straight through him years ago on a mission in China.  

From there her fingers sketch a path up to a narrow but deep wound that left a ragged, puckered scar just beneath his ribs and from then on to a burn just over his heart, on and on her fingers ghost over him, as though his skin contains a universe and she’s tracing constellations into his bones. She seems in no rush with him and he has no desire whatsoever to ask her to stop or explain herself, understanding the longing for contact and connection that he feels pulsing between them as well.

Gradually, her wandering fingertips find their way to his right forearm where he has a tattoo inscribed from his days in the military, an intricate pattern of interlocking circles that stands out and catches her eye.

“It’s military,” he explains, without knowing why he’s telling her this, breaking the silence between them and inadvertently breaking some of the tension between them too, “I had it done in,” he swallows hard and then manages to finish, “in Thailand...” but he trails off a few seconds later when their eyes meet again.

His eyes continue to drift towards her lips and he’s still acutely aware of how her hands have settled themselves almost absent-mindedly against his chest as he hastily makes eye contact with her again. Adrenaline is still thrumming through his veins along with something that seems to run a little deeper, concerned with something more than blood and body, brushing with gentle insistence against his soul.

His chest seems incredibly constricted, as though someone had tightened thick, iron bands around his lungs making it so difficult for him to breathe. His heart is pounding so hard against his ribs that he’s afraid it’s going to burst free from the restraints of his bones, its frantic rhythm reminiscent of a hammer descending repeatedly against an anvil. His skin seems to burn beneath her fingertips, as though someone’s filled his veins with wildfire and it’s being dragged to the surface wherever her fingers happen to touch him.

Without really meaning to or making a conscious decision to do so, he finds himself leaning towards her and, on the same instinctual impulse it seems, she finds herself mirroring him. His hand begins on her thigh and slides it slowly up her side, mapping out every curve of her body until he reaches her cheek where his hand comes to rest, his thumb absently stroking the skin while his fingers tangle their way through her hair as they continue to test one another and push each other’s boundaries a little further and a little further.

The world has contracted to this single instance, this one, heart stopping moment that seems to eclipse everything else, as though the world is being drained around them, leaving a barren landscape devoid of any shape or colour or texture that isn’t the shape of her lips, the rich deep colour of her eyes or the texture of her skin as it flows beneath his hands. He feels quite sure that this world is one he would be more than happy to live in.

Her eyes have fluttered closed as she leans into him and they’re inches apart when a loud voice behind them interrupts, “Kane! Abby!” Raven bellows from the door, causing Finn to bound happily to greet her even before she’s announced, “I’ve brought food.”

Hastily jumping apart, the spell broken they get to their feet and hurry towards Raven, pointedly avoiding each other’s eyes, both afraid and exhilarated by what just happened between them, the connection he can still feel pulsing in a faint undercurrent beneath the surface of their interactions seeming stronger now than it ever had before.

****

 


	6. Veritas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon, projecting forwards a little, (spoilers up to 3x04) Abby and Marcus in Arkadia at the culmination of their journey together.

 

 Part 6 – Veritas 

The thin curtains are drawn against the sunset that’s still trying its best to flood the room with light and the two of them are bathed in a soft, warm glow where they lie entwined on the bed together. They’re both naked, and her skin is hot and flushed and a thin sheen of sweat still clings to it but in spite of that she’s not cold. Sheets are draped loosely around her hips leaving her top half bare but she’s pressed close enough to him to get the benefit from the heat radiating from him.

Her head is resting on his chest, rising and falling in time with the measured rhythm of his breathing, her hair is splayed out lazily over his body and neither of them is making any move to do anything about this. Shifting a little in his arms to enable her to look up at him she sees that his eyes are closed but as her fingers trail absently over his wrist, her practiced touch finds his pulse on impulse and its rapid beat tells her that he’s nowhere near sleep.

A small smile touches her lips at this discovery and she rests herself a little more comfortably against him, settling ostentatiously on top of him, as though his body were a throne and letting her smile widen somewhat at that thought. She lets her arms drape across his torso, holding him in a little closer and nudging in until her body is pressed flush into his and then, with a deep breath that she exhales slowly and contentedly, she lets herself stop.  

His fingers drift lazily through the soft clouds of her hair, stroking absent-mindedly and she allows him to continue, finding the motion oddly soothing. As he does that she finds her fingers wandering, almost absently, down to the brand on his arm that he received in Polis as a mark that they were now part of Lexa’s coalition, binding them to the established Grounder clans on the ground, an honour that she had insisted Marcus accept after all of his work in forging diplomatic relations with the Commander and the Grounders, keeping the peace as best he could throughout their time on the ground.   

Without any conscious thought on her part, her hand begins trailing slowly up his arm, following one of the veins she can sense beneath the skin, tracing it all the way up until she reaches his shoulder and her fingers hit the sprawling bruise that extends out from the centre point like a spider web or a smash in a pane of glass, bursting out as thought a blood firework had erupted beneath his skin. The edges of her fingers catch on the still rough and raw edges of the wound at its heart and she feels him stir beneath her, opening his eyes at which point she hastily withdraws her hand as though scalded.  

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs automatically, feathering her lips against his collarbone in apology, “I know it’s still tender,” she says, berating herself for letting herself ruin the quiet moment of content by dredging up old wounds, picking at the fraying edges and causing them to bleed all over again; as though they hadn’t bled enough already.

“It’s okay, Abby,” his voice is slightly hoarse and husky and a shiver trickles through her spine in spite of herself at the sound of it.

Slowly, tenderly, he reaches down and lifts her hand up in his then replaces it on his chest, by the wound on his shoulder, where it had been before she pulled it away, emphasising his words with deeds to try and prove to her that it really is okay. A soft smile creases her lips at that thought, there’s something about it that’s just intensely _Marcus,_ and that pleases her. She lets her hand remain, opening it out, like a flower blooming and unveiling its petals like flowing skirts, and places her palm flat against his muscle, feeling the faint, reassuring thrum of life within him beneath her touch.

A moment later he’s covered her hand with his own, much larger, rougher one, holding hers firmly in place and further reassuring her actions. It echoes a moment she remembers, what feels like years ago, when they stood on the outskirts of Polis after a short argument in which he had gone a little too far. His apology had been heartfelt and genuine, she had been sure, and when he had reached out and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder to seal the promise and the intent she had rested her hand on top of his to accept it and tell him without words that she understood.

Slowly, a measure of peaceful calm trickles into her at this thought and at the connection that still lingers between them, like the hot, warm honeyed tea that Marcus had insisted she try in Polis sliding down her throat and warming her from the inside out and she lets the smile return slowly to her face for a moment as the tension in the room eases somewhat.  

Then her fingers brush over the ragged edge of the wound on his shoulder and it floods back in and her voice is hard and taut when she says stiffly, forcing out the words past the bile in her throat, “I hate it.”

She feels his muscles contract as he sits up slightly, looking down at her, a quizzical, puzzled look creasing his face at this sudden, vehement announcement, shattering the quiet, settled peace that had been enveloping them up to that point.

Finally, she forces herself to meet his gaze and to explain in a softer, far more broken whisper, “I hate what it means,” she tells him, “I hate what it reminds me of,” his hand comes to rest gently at the valley between her shoulder blades, rubbing softly up and down, trying to soothe the tension he feels boiling within her, she looks up at him again, making sure that he meets her eyes as she says, “You could have died that day Marcus.”

She feels his arms tighten slightly around her at that, holding her in closer, trying to reassure her that he’s here with her but it can’t stop the shudder that trembles through her at the very thought. She drops her gaze from his as his hand lifts up to the nape of her neck, lightly massaging there, trying to work out the hard knot of tension that’s tightening beneath her skin with every moment that passes, “When they took you away, I thought, I thought,” her voice shatters finally as she huddles against him, the things she’s been bottling up for weeks now bursting out of her all in a tangled rush, “I thought that I might never see you again, I-“ she breaks off completely then, overcome, her breath catching in a taut, slightly hysterical sound somewhere between a shaking gasp and a sob.

He takes the opportunity to wrap both arms securely around her and pull her in even closer, drawing her right up until she’s lying on top of him, their bodies pressed together, their legs tangled together, the sheets sliding even further down her body but she doesn’t care. He’s warm and reassuring and his embrace is that of safety and comfort and peace.

He winds his fingers through her thick hair, stroking it soothingly and murmuring to her while she clings to him, desperately trying to get her ragged breathing back under control, “I’m alright, Abby,” he whispers quietly to her, lightly kissing the top of her head, “I’m not going anywhere,” he promises quietly, his words swallowed by the darkness that’s beginning to enfold them like a veil, like an embrace.

“Damn right you’re not,” she snarls, a little, hot kick of fierceness suddenly injected into her words that makes a fresh burst of strength pulse through her.

He lets himself smile then sobers a moment later, giving her shoulders a soft squeeze, “It’s over now,” he breathes quietly, still stroking her hair in the same calming manner, “It’s over,” she shudders again, nestling in as close to him as she can, shutting her eyes as she buries her face against his chest.

_The sun hangs low in the sky, an oppressive orb of fire setting everything on the horizon alight with the ominous feeling of spreading in to cover the rest of the land before long. It mirrors the feelings of dread that have been constricting Abby’s stomach for days perfectly, the feeling that something is coming, creeping up on her, overheating the camp around her until it’s reached near boiling point, threatening to overwhelm them at any moment._

_Her voice is low and urgent as she hisses at Marcus, “I’m worried about you so would you please listen to me this time,” she implores him, trying to sound stern and fierce instead of desperate but the faint tremor that trembles through her words gives her away, “|You’re going to get yourself in serious trouble if you running around and flouting Pike’s authority the way you’ve been doing.”_

_A faint, wry half-smile dares to lift the corner’s of his lips at this and, with an evident if brave attempt at lightening the mood and somewhat lessening the ever mounting tension that’s growing so strong between them a single harsh breath seems enough to snap it, “That’s all you did on the Ark before we came down, Abby, you didn’t have so much of a problem with it when it was you flouting my authority.”_

_“And I was nearly executed every other week because of it,” she snaps furiously at him, her nerves to frayed and ragged to stand him talking the way he is, “This is serious, Marcus,” she tells him flatly, her voice reaching new levels of urgency as she gazes into his eyes and fights to make him understand, refusing to rise to his bait, not interested in discussing history or trying to find the lighter side of it now that the present is so all consuming and terrifying, “If you carry on pushing Pike this way he’s going to lock you up or he’s going to kill you.”_

_“When we were on the Ark,” he says surprising her by returning to this but with a very different, stronger, lower, much more intense tone of voice, “Why did you do all of the things that you did? Why did you oppose me as often and as strongly as you did?”_

_“That’s not the point, Marcus, it-“she tries to interrupt, able to see where this is going and not wishing to hear a word of it._

_“It is the point, Abby,” he says starkly, taking a step closer to her, making the distance between them almost completely non-existent, “The point is that I’m doing what you did; what I believe is right,” she despairs of him, despairs of what he’s saying, despairs of his sentiments because she’s heard them all before and they’ve cost her dearly in the past, a price she’s unwilling and almost certainly unable to bear paying again, “What Pike is doing is wrong. Wrong on principle and wrong for our people you know that.”_

_He seems just as determined and desperate to make her understand his reasons and his point of view as she is to make him heed her warnings. There’s no space between them anymore, no room for hiding, no room for masks, just purely them and all of their vulnerabilities, all of their flaws and weaknesses open for display behind their eyes at this distance._

_His eyes are wide and frantic in his desire to communicate with hers, to see beyond the reason and the cool words of caution to the haunted soul beneath that he’s desperate to connect with and a part of her lets him, trying in turn to have him see the heart of what she’s trying to tell him. Without seeming to think about it he reaches out and grips the top of her arm tightly, connecting them physically, trying to make her see, trying to make her understand._

_And that’s the worst part of it. She understands it, she understands all of it. She knows how he sees Pike and the actions he’s taking, she knows how it kills him, how it tears him apart, how it terrifies him and keeps him up at night and feels as though it’s driving knives beneath his skin and into his soul because she’s been there. That was her on the Ark, he was right, she has been here, in his shoes, making his choices, for his reasons, and so she understands them perfectly. She knows what all of this is costing him and what he would give to change it, to put a stop to it because she recognises herself in his eyes now. It terrifies her._

_In desperation she reaches up and gently covers the hand that’s still gripping her arm almost painfully tightly and, without ever breaking eye contact with him, she lays her hand gently on top of it, “What you’re doing might be right in your eyes, and in mine too,” she adds, hoping to break through the layer of stubbornness that’s preventing him from hearing her properly by showing him that she does know, does understand how he feels, that she has felt the same, “But in the eyes of the law, Pike’s law, in Pike’s eyes, it’s wrong, it’s treason. What you’re doing has to stop,” she implores him._

_“Look at me,” she demands, moving in and raising her hand to his face, cupping her cheek within it and making him turn to look down at her and hold her gaze before she says, “Meeting Indra in secret is illegal, he’ll call it fraternizing with the enemy,” she cuts him off swiftly before he can protest, “Warning her of raids and attacks he’ll say is selling our secrets to our enemies. Intervening on attacks and politics, trying to sow the seeds of doubt, trying to make people see your way he will call treason,” she whispers to him, the hand that’s not on his face sliding down his arm and grasping for his hand, finally finding it and then clinging on for grim death, “He will twist everything that you’re doing Marcus. He will make you seem as bad as the people who destroyed Mount Weather. He’ll make you seem like the bad guy, like a traitor and he will use that as a reason to kill you, please-“_

_“I can’t just sit stand here and do nothing while he kills and encourages other people to kill, it’s wrong, Abby,” he says, shaking his head, not moving away from her, but not answering any of her little touches with ones of his own, as he usual does when she reaches out, “We’ve come too far, we’ve been through too much for me to just do nothing and let it all happen,” he tells her shaking his head hopelessly._

_“Marcus,” she breathes, close to tears now, though she does everything she can to push them back, “Marcus,” she repeats, her voice softening and deepening, “You dying isn’t going to change anything,” she tells him flatly, “If you keep standing up to him and sacrifice yourself for this nothing will change. He won’t stop. The things he’s doing won’t become right. He won’t suddenly see everything from your point of view. You won’t even be a martyr to a cause you have no cause, Marcus,” she tells him, her fear blunting the edges of her words until she knows they’ll hurt like punches, but if that’s what it takes to get through to him she’d do it a hundred times over, “You have treason. And the name of a traitor. And crimes beyond count. And a death sentence hanging over your head. What you’re doing is suicide and **you** cannot expect **me** to sit back and do nothing about that. Not again.” _

_He looks at a loss for words but one hand slowly lifts and the tips of his fingers tenderly brush her cheek and she closes her eyes and lets herself indulge in the contact, trying to savour the moment for what it is and not spend every second of it wondering what it will feel like if he can never touch her like that again, can never be with her like this again. How it would feel if he was just gone, she never saw him again, never heard his voice again, never felt the things he’s woken in her she thought had been numbed for the rest of her life._

_“He’s going to hurt you if you keep pushing him like this,” she murmurs softly, her voice hoarse and a little raw now, “And it won’t do any good,” she lets her fingers flex against his cheek, “Promise me,” she whispers to him, “Promise me that you’ll back off. Even just for a little while, let things cool, stop him watching you so closely, take the heat off just a little,” she implores him, trying to keep the cracked anxiety out of her voice but not sure it works and in the end, decides to damn it all, “I can’t lose you,” she breathes, stepping in so close that she can feel every breath he exhales lightly stirring her hair, “I can’t lose you too, Marcus, not after everything else,” she whispers, shaking her head, “Promise me. Please,” she adds in a desperate breath, “Please, Marcus.”_

_He stares down into her eyes, the hand that she’s still clutching at softening within her grip, relaxing, moulding itself to the shape of her fingers, letting them twine softly together, connecting them as he looks at her and refuses to break eye contact despite the raw, untamed energy and emotion that’s stirring beneath her eyes, “Abby, I-“ he begins, his voice softer and warmer and somehow so much more human than before, when he was making all of his arguments to her._

_Before he can say more than that however the door behind them opens and both of them look round at once. She notices his hand fly instinctively to his hip where he would have a gun holstered if he was beyond the wall or on duty patrolling them._

_Both of them see Pike striding into the room at the same time, flanked by three of the remaining Farm Station survivors, all of them armed, a deliberate show of force and strength, meant to show in the most visible way possible that they’re hopelessly out-matched and out-numbered. That fact isn’t lost on Marcus, she’s certain, he’s had too much tactical training to ever miss this display for what it is but that doesn’t stop him from stepping protectively, and seemingly instinctively, without any real thought involved, in front of her._

_Years on the council and her own tenure as Chancellor on the ground however, as well as many more years learning to read people as a doctor, something that she often found essential to treating reluctant or mistrustful patients on the Ark hasn’t left Abby ignorant of such shows either however and she, unlike Marcus, or perhaps as well as but with more regard for his safety than he has himself, she notes the way that each and every eye, even before he had moved to shield her from view with his body, is fixed on Marcus, marking him as their target and their purpose._

_Making note of this and fearing the worst from it from the swoop of dread that immediately contracts in her gut, an instinct that she’s learned to trust over the years, one that’s saved several people’s lives, she acts upon it once again. Stepping out from behind him she slips lithely in front of him and faces Pike, unable to stop herself crossing her arms over her chest, a defensive gesture, even as she glowers at his approaching figure._

_“What do you want?” she demands, a little more aggressively than she had originally intended to and the venom in her voice apparently takes both Pike and Marcus aback, the former raises a questioning eyebrow at her and she feels the latter shift in surprise and concern at her back._

_Pike chooses not to rise and open hostilities too early and his tone is as mild as Abby had attempted to make hers when he says, “I’m here for Marcus, not you, Abby.”_

_“That doesn’t change my question,” she says, successfully managing a more composed tone of voice herself this time as she studies him and then lets her eyes flick back to the armed and silent guards behind him who are watching the process unfold with wary gazes, their hands clenched tightly around their weapons, “What do you want, Pike?”_

_“That’s Chancellor Pike to you,” snaps one of the guards behind him, speaking for the first time and actually taking a step forwards as he does so. She feels Marcus hand dart out and coil around her wrist, drawing her back away from the threat and closer to him._

_Pike however, chooses once again to diffuse the situation before it becomes one, “It’s alright,” he says, with a half a glance over his shoulder and the man immediately stands down and falls back into his original position._

_Refocusing himself on Abby and Marcus again, he directs his gaze upwards, away from Abby’s irate features and to Marcus behind her instead, “You’ve given me a very serious problem to contend with, Kane,” he says, very quietly._

_His eyes are fixed certainly on Marcus now and the faint pulse of dread that had flickered through Abby earlier in response to his arrival constricts into a painful knot of awful certainty and she struggles to stop her terror showing on her face as he goes on,_

_“I’ve received intelligence that you have been making regular trips out of the camp and into Grounder territory, into enemy territory,” he clarifies the last quickly and Abby reaches back and catches Marcus’ hand in her own, clinging onto it tightly, as though to bind them together and keep him by her no matter what may follow, “I’ve received further, and even more damning evidence that you have been passing along policies and plans from inside this camp to those enemies,” Abby’s now so taut she can feel her erect muscles screaming in protest but she ignores them, she can see where this is going, and she hates it, and no amount of quiet, reassuring touches of Marcus’ deft fingers on her arm and back can fix that, “That’s treason, Kane,” Pike tells him, still in that same, soft, measured, infinitely reasonable voice, “I have to do something about this, you understand.”_

_“No,” it’s not Marcus who answers Pike’s challenges but Abby. A lump the size of an egg in her throat making every word painful she forces them out anyway as she pulls herself from Marcus’ tender, restraining touch and steps away from him towards Pike, denying this, denying the arrest, denying the charges, denying anything that might conspire to take Marcus away from her, “This is ridiculous, Pike,” she tells him, trying to keep her voice as level and reasonable and sane as his while every fibre of her being longs to run at him, to shake him, to scream at him, to tear the chancellor’s pin from his jacket and declare him unfit to lead them._

_“Marcus has committed a crime, Abby,” Pike explains to her patiently, as though trying to impress something incredibly simple on her, like the concept that two and two added together will give four, “I am Chancellor here, it’s my responsibility, now that I have discovered this crime and investigated it to a degree that I’m certain it took place, to arrest him and punish him for it.”_

_“The only person in this room who’s committed crimes recently that require punishment is you,” she tells him starkly, her voice becoming a shade rougher and darker as she takes yet another step towards him and two of his guards raise their guns in an attempt to force her to back off but she ignores them, her entire aspect focused on the man opposite her, “All Marcus has done is the right thing, tried to undo some of the damage that you have caused. You can’t lock him up for that, you can’t punish him for that, I won’t let you-“_

_“Abby,” it’s Marcus’ quiet voice that answers her challenge, and Marcus who steps in to respond, not Pike, he places himself between them, drawing her away from him, deeper into the room, his hand squeezing her arm in what’s meant to be a placating, calming gesture, “I knew the risks involved when I did what I did,” he tells her softly, she makes to interrupt, to protest, to stop him playing right into Pike’s hands and giving him exactly what he wants but he stops her, placing his other hand on her arm and forming a circle that joins the two of them with his soft touch as the bridge between them, “I committed a crime. Under his laws and his rule what I did was treason. He’s right, I have to be punished for that. We have to answer for our sins.”_

_She shakes her head in mute appeal, unable to speak, unable to understand why he’s doing it but his next actions and words make his intentions perfectly clear, “Your our doctor, Abby. Our people look up to you still, they respect you, still. They **need** you still. You have to stay strong for them and you have to stay out of prison for them,” he says, putting a greater emphasis on his last few words, “Your people need you Abby. You have to protect them,” then he leans forwards hesitantly and presses a soft kiss to the top of her head, drawing back he says, “For me.” _

_He turns to see three of Pike’s four guards having moved right up behind him, attempting to slap cuffs onto his wrists to march him through the camp, parade him, mark him for what he is, make it so that everyone knows what he’s done. A part of her wants to heed him, wants to do what he says, knows that he’s speaking the truth, a hard truth, but the truth as always. But another part of her still wants to rage and storm and is still too full of hot emotion to be calmed by his cold logic and that part of her is, in the end, stronger, and reaches out to grasp his arm, pulling him back round to face her, away from Pike’s guards, with a strength that surprises even her._

_“And what if **I** need **you** , Marcus?” she whispers to him, having eyes only for him, forgetting Pike, forgetting the guards and their guns and the charges and the arrest that’s in progress, conscious of him and him alone. _

_The guard behind him is tugging insistently and rather aggressively at his arm, trying to pull him back and away from her to face his judgement and Pike’s brand of justice but the world seems to have contracted down to contain nothing but this fleeting, finite moment as well and he seems utterly oblivious to their attempts to restrain him and pull him away from her._

_There’s a strange, hard, blazing look in his eyes that she’s never seen there before, a heat that mirrors the adrenaline and emotion still stirring within her, overcoming all of his previous cold, clipped logic, marking him as a man very different to the one who sentenced her to death on the Ark for doing what she believed was right and saving the life of another any way she could, replaced by the man she’s watched change and grow every moment, the man who learned from his mistakes and swore to be better because of them, the man who found himself down here and the man she found too._

_The man she’s come to know, the man she’s come to trust, the man she’s come to rely upon, the man she’s come to consider as a friend, as more than that, as a confidant, an advisor, a right hand, a partner. The man she’s come to fall in love with._

_Time behaves oddly, both seeming to stand still, stretching and lengthening until every lifetime she might have led in this one becomes contained in a few seconds that at the same time, seem to explode and burst around her before she’s quite realised what’s happened._

_One moment she’s looking into his eyes and thinking about how they’ve changed, about how she feels for the man reflected within them and the next he’s crashing towards her. One hand slides round behind the back of her head, his thumb coming to rest on her cheek, adding a degree of tenderness to the rough, urgent kiss he presses against her lips with the air of a man who’s been waiting to do this for far too long._

_The initial burst melts into intimacy; unbridled lust and passion becomes restrained by emotion.  They melt into one another, sinking deeper and deeper into the kiss and into each other, both of them numbed to the world around them, as though their tongues are laced with novocaine that dulls every sensation but the one they’re wrapped in, making it not only possible but easy to forget about the tension and danger that surrounds them, allowing for a single stolen moment of blissful ignorance that she would happily spend the rest of her life indulging in._

_One hand curls around his back and comes to rest just below his shoulder, the other slides round behind his head and slides through his hair, pulling him closer. His arms wrap tenderly around her, pressing her body against his, as though he’s incapable of having enough of her in contact with him, as though he wants all of their ripped and tattered threads, all of their broken, jagged edges fitting together like puzzle pieces, forming a coherent whole that they’ve been missing, that he never wants to pull apart again._

_Her body instinctively follows his, longing to be with him, not wanting to break the kiss yet, not wanting to let him go ever again. But rough hands have tightened around his shoulders and wrenched him out of her arms. Someone jostles hard against her and she finds herself knocked to the floor, an involuntary cry of pain bursting from her. Confusion reigns above her and she hears Marcus shout in protest and concern. A gun goes off and she hears him grunt in pain then Pike bellows over it all, ordering them all to stop, to get Marcus on his feet, to take him away._

_She scrambles to her feet when a small spot of blood lands near her feet, and, looking up she realises that it’s come from a wound in Marcus’ shoulder that her fogged brain manages to connect with the sound of the gunshot she heard._

_“Marcus!” she cries, attempting to push forwards, to reach him, to see to him, to assess the damage that must be concerning at the very least from the way that the two guards are supporting him as he slumps between them, grimacing in pain, “Marcus,” she struggles to get past Pike and his two remaining guards who are now firmly separating her from Marcus and struggles so fiercely that one of them curses loudly and tries to shove her back deeper into the room._

_“He needs medical attention,” she snarls angrily, trying to appeal to Pike, grabbing his shoulder and being pulled harshly away by one of his guards for her troubles._

_“He’ll get it,” he says shortly, “When he’s been confined. And it won’t come from you,” he promises her sharply before he turns and tries to make it to the door again._

_Once again however she stops him and holds him back, her eyes blazing as she whispers,” If you kill him,” her voice breaks and she forces herself to stop and take a deep steadying breath before she begins again, “If you hurt him again-“_

_“Are you threatening me Abby?” Pike asks her, quiet anger burning in his eyes as behind him his guards begin pulling Marcus towards the door._

_“You’re damn right I am,” she breathes, taking another step towards him, ignoring the insistent shoves against her shoulder from his guards, “If you do anything to hurt him. I will make sure you regret it.”_

_Pike surveys her with a superior air and then says coldly, each syllable etched and dragged out, “I’ll take that under advisement.”_

_With that he turns and leaves her standing alone and stricken in the council chambers, the taste of his kiss still lingering on her lips, the taste of half-forgotten promises and half-remembered truths and a longing for just one more brief reminder of what the happiness and feeling of life and comfort and safety he inspired in her before the end._

_Dread coils like a twisted serpent in her stomach and she wonders if she wonders if she’ll ever see him again. Then, thinking this, she realises a moment later with a sharp jolt as though she’s just taken a bullet to the back of the skull, that she never managed to tell him how she feels about him. She wonders if she’ll get that chance if Pike decides to execute him, if she’ll be allowed to say goodbye and say it right there at the last moment. Or if she’s already too late._

_Darkness shrouds her as the sun sinks below the horizon and sucks the natural light from the room, leaving her a hollow shadow among shadows, empty and already feeling half gone._

Shivering slightly at the memories she nestles in against him, her eyes closed, her head upon his chest, listening to his heart beat beneath his ribs, seemingly in time with hers, as though there’s something deeper to this intimacy and this connection that she feels with him than physical contact. He hums contentedly and rests a hand absently on her back, softly stroking along the curve of her spine between her shoulder blades once more and that makes her smile because she knows that he knows how much she likes it and is taking full advantage of that fact.

After a moment, and without moving at all, only opening her eyes and letting her fingers trace slow, meandering, endless circles across his chest, she whispers softly, her words stolen by the darkness, melting into the quiet that surrounds them, “I love you, Marcus.”

She feels him react, something rippling through his body as he shifts his position, sitting up slightly, his hand pausing on her back as he looks down at her. Adjusting herself she props herself up and looks at him, finding his eyes despite the black cast of night that’s surrounded them, “I love you,” she repeats, her voice still soft and intimate, her words not bellowed in a battle cry or a fierce declaration but as a quietly spoken whisper, a promise, a prayer, a truth just for him and she knows that he’ll understand that.

He watches her and lets the silence stretch and deepen between them for so long she begins to worry that he’ll never speak or move again. Then he extends himself and moves forwards, pressing his lips tenderly against hers in a soft kiss. When he breaks apart he raises himself and kisses her forehead and then whispers with tender firmness, “I love you too, Abby.”

Smiling gently she closes her eyes and settles herself on top of him, coaxing him to lie back down again so that she can rest her head on his chest once more. They wrap their arms around one another, cradling each other in the quiet calm that envelopes them and fall asleep still entwined in a close embrace around one another.

****

 


End file.
